Decorating shelves

I've been playing around with decorating our new shelves in the living room. I don't want to fall into the same decorating rut I had with the bookshelf. So I turned to my trusty friend Google for some photo inspiration.

Frames filled with family photos are a must.

apartment therapy

Fun pops of color for sure.

margot austin

White, white white will definitely be incorporated.

the lovely lifestyle

I plan to add monogrammed, personalized pieces.

real simple

Some pretty glass pieces will help balance out without making the shelves look too crowded.

young house love

I love the mixed style of frames with tiny accent pieces.

me oh my

It will probably take me some time and a few shopping trips until I'm completely satisfied with the shelves. Until then I'm just enjoying the new open, brighter space in our living room.

Back in Business and a Living Room Update

Between trips to NY, mother's day, planning our anniversary, and me starting to train my temp replacement at work, we have been very busy in the DeMaio household. But I am finally back and have some projects in the works this week to update you all. First was the bookcase project I mentioned in the past few updates. We finally got around to doing it! 

A few months ago....

Me: I just thought of a great idea for the living room! One corner of it actually. Where the bookcase is.

Jordan: Do I even want to know?

Me: It would involve giving you the bookcase for your man room. You can put DVDs and baseball memorabilia on it. Does that help..?

Jordan: I'm listening...

This is the said bookcase. Making a bookcase look attractive without losing its practicality has always been a challenge for me. As you can see I start strong on the top shelf or two and by the time I reach the bottom I'm just shoving the leftover books and junk that have no other place to go. 

This beauty will be relocating to the man room in the basement. 

What man room? 

Well it isn't quite there yet. Now that we have a baby on the way, we've pretty much realized we are here to stay for a few more years. We have plenty of room in this house and it's the perfect size to maintain with our busy schedules. I've always promised Jordan the basement as a man cave of sorts, and it wasn't until recently that he's decided he wants to take on the project. He always figured we would wait until we got into our 'permanent' house to put the money into a man room. This will be a work in progress as we need to replace lighting, put in carpeting and fix the paneling on the walls. But we've got a spare room/office in the basement jam packed with all sorts of Red Sox/baseball memorabilia waiting for a place to call home. 

Here is how the corner of the living room has looked for the past two weeks with our new floor:

One thing that has frustrated me about this corner is how dark it is with all the furniture. Now that we have ripped out the carpet and replaced it with hardwood, it is even darker than before. But I came up with a plan. That bookcase is outta there. Booted to the basement. In place of it - three white Lack shelves from IKEA. By choosing white shelves we can break up the space and the dark corner of the living room. I have plans to add plenty of colorful accent pieces to keep things fresh.

We've had the shelves for about a month now, but never had a chance to put them up. Initially our goal was to try to hang them before the carpet was replaced, but time got away from us. This weekend we finally got around to hanging them. 

We chose the 46.5" Lack wall shelf - $19.99 each.

In the next week or so I will play around with decorating the shelves. I'm afraid to put many books on them because of the weight restriction. The instructions claim that these shelves can hold up to 33 pounds depending how you mount them, but I don't want to push the limit. 

My plan is to mix and match different sized and colored frames with some bright decorative pieces as well as some clear glass accents. I'm already loving that corner of the room. Without the dark, tall bookcase the space is so open and light. It completely breaks up the room and adds that pop of white that I've been craving.

We have a busy week ahead. Tomorrow we have our first class - Infant CPR. I also have a mini project to work on for Jordan for our anniversary. He's going to a soccer game Wednesday so my plan is to work on it while he's out, but won't give you the details until after we celebrate this upcoming weekend. Since traveling is somewhat restricted for me, we decided to have a simple weekend getaway down the beach. We live about an hour and a half from the Delaware beaches and have booked a hotel for Friday and Saturday nights. Our plan is to enjoy the gorgeous weather with long walks around town, a little shopping, great dinners and no interruptions.

Hope you all had a great weekend and a beautiful Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all you mommies and mommy-to-bes out there. 

But most of all, happy mother's day to my beautiful mom.

Weekend Recap

I'm always a little sad on Sunday nights because it means that the weekend is over. I did have a great three day weekend with Jordan so I really shouldn't complain. We went to NY Friday morning to attend the wedding of a girlfriend of mine who I went to college with. It was a gorgeous ceremony - she looked amazing and the two of them seemed so happy all day. The food was insane and the reception was a complete blast. It was the first wedding we had been to since our own a year ago and we really enjoyed the night away. 

I wish I could have gotten better pictures, but here are just a few: 

 Me and my girls with the groom.

Happiness <3

The rest of our weekend was spent relaxing at home with the family, lots of naps, dinners out and grocery shopping. 

A new week means a fresh start to tackle some projects that I have seriously been slacking on. I'm coming down to the last 10 weeks of my pregnancy and still have so much I want to get done before she comes. I have been in full on nesting mode the last few months, but took a break the last week or two to relax and enjoy some alone time with the hubby while we still have it. 

I have a lot of small touches I still need to add to the nursery including some paint touchups, a mirror and wall art. The bookshelf is still in our living room, and we've continued to put that project on hold, but hopefully will be done this week. I also want to take some time to work on our dining room - specifically reupholstering the chairs, finding some great pillows for the bench and finally getting a rug for under the table.

And of course, two weeks from today marks our first year wedding anniversary. I have yet to get hubby anything, although I have had it on the brain for the past few weeks. My plan is to keep with the traditional first anniversary gift of paper. I have three ideas, although I'm not going to mention them here in case Jordan takes a peek. But time is flying so I need to get my butt in gear.

Here's to a new, productive week!

Throwing in the Towel

Well, I finally sucked it up and went to the mall and bought a few new items of clothing. My plan was to last as long as I could with the clothes in my closet and resort to leggings once my belly band no longer allowed me to squeeze into my jeans. Ideally, once that happened the warm spring weather would kick in and I could just wear all my dresses. What I did not think through is that most of the dresses I own are seamed at the waist and not flowy or empire waisted like I now need.

While I did "throw in the towel" and buy some new clothes, I still have refused to purchase anything from a maternity store. This is for two reasons. First, they are pretty expensive! I have no idea what size I'll be next week, much less for the remaining 11 so I hesitate to spend the money on something I may only wear once or twice. Secondly, I honestly haven't found any maternity clothes I like. I'm pretty picky about my clothes, especially because I have such a small frame to begin with that I despise most of the maternity clothes available and how they look on me. 

The weather has been gorgeous lately and so I pulled out an old favorite maxi dress I purchased from Urban Outfitters about three years ago and wore it to work with a white crochet vest.

photo courtesy of urbanupdater

I was so comfortable all day and the flowy high waisted material perfectly suited my every-growing belly. 

THank goodness maxi dresses are back for 2011!! Lots of stores are carrying them now and they have quickly become my maternity saviour. 

Hubby gave me one for Valentine's Day that it was finally warm enough to wear on Easter.

(Sidenote: My belly is much bigger in person than it look in this pic!)

After work that day I hit up H&M at my mall and scored three more great maxis for a total of $60. 

- a racerback black and white striped maxi

- a turquoise maxi with a black lace cutup on the upper back

- a strapless floral maxi

I was looking on their website to snag a few pictures of the dresses I bought so I could share, however none of them are there. I haven't decided if I'm comfortable enough yet to take pictures of myself in them to post like many of the fashion blogs I follow, but maybe I'll muster the courage and just do it.

What I did find on their website was that H&M has a Mama maternity line!

The selection looks pretty limited so far, but I see potential for some good basic tanks as well as shorts (which I've been hoping to be able to wear).

Tank - $7.95

Dress - $34.95

Dress - $24.95

Shorts - $24.95

Pants - $24.95

Top - $19.95

The best part is that the prices are normal! I'm not sure yet if any of these are available in any of the stores since I wasn't really looking for maternity clothes when I was there. I will say that I have been able to score a few non-maternity items at H&M over the past few months that have worked so far.

Well, we are off to NY for the night for a wedding in Staten Island. I'll be back to fill you in on our next project in the living room that involves removing the bookcase. And maybe snap a few pictures of my new maxi finds for any mommy-to-be's out there looking for some fresh spring clothes.