"Canvas Press" Review

**Sponsored Post: This post is sponsored by Canvas Press, but the content and opinions expressed here are my own.**

Every year I love to get our family picture on a canvas to hang in our gallery wall above our sectional in the living room. I have tried several different companies and have always had a pleasant experience, but this year I used a new company called Canvas Press and they were absolutely wonderful to work with. From the exceptional quality to the extremely fast turn-around time, I was really happy with everything from start to finish.

I ordered my canvas on a Tuesday and it arrived that same week on Friday. You can't beat that fast turn-around time. The canvas was wrapped beautifully and the colors are spot on and very vibrant. It was easy to upload my photo and order the canvas on their very user-friendly website. I really can't say enough great things about this company.

They have a special right now where you can get 55% off (plus free shipping on orders of $50 or more), so now is a great time to order.



Back To School Themed Dining Room Decor

It's been almost a month since I've blogged. We've been so busy this Summer and I have so much I want to blog, I just haven't had the time to do it. So I thought I'd ease back in with a fun, decorating post.

I like to change out the décor in my dining room for each major holiday. So after the 4th of July, I didn't really have anything special to go in there. So when I was in Target the other day and saw all their cute "back to school" décor in their dollar spot, I thought it would be so cute to do a "back to school" theme in the dining room. Plus I thought the kids would love it too.

I searched around on Pinterest for some ideas and came up with a list of stuff to use that I already had on hand, along with some things I wanted to find. I already knew Target had a lot of cute stuff, so I checked around there and the only other store I went to was Michaels.

I always try to incorporate the wooden caddy I use as a centerpiece by changing what's in it to go with the theme. My mom found it at Ross and I just love it. We already had the fake grass from when we used it for Easter with eggs. So I went to Michaels and found a bundle of apples for $9.99 and used a 50% off coupon. I just cut them and stuck them in the Styrofoam that we have under the grass. I got the ruler ribbon from Target in the dollar spot and just tied a bow to make it a little more festive.

I found the little "dream big" star at Target for $1 along with the apple chalkboard clothes pins. I thought the clothes pins were so cute, but really didn't know how I would use them. Luckily, as I was putting everything together I thought to pin them to the top of my galvanized napkin rings that are also from the dollar spot at Target from last Fall. I just wrote A, B, C, and D on them.

I had the plates, napkins and table runner already on hand, as well as the salt and pepper shakers, napkin caddy and coasters. I love all of my galvanized table décor because it goes with anything and can be used with any holiday décor.

I also tied on some of the dollar spot ruler ribbon to the salt and pepper shaker caddy to add a little fun to it. :-)

The red glitter apple mason jars were in the Target dollar spot and the pencils are just regular number 2 pencils that you can get for under $2 a pack anywhere.

I love my buffet and love decorating it for different holidays as well. I had seen where someone used a globe in their back to school décor so I thought since I already had one for "back to school" photo sessions, that it would be super cute to incorporate it. I happened to find it last year at a consignment shop for only $10!!

The apple banner that I have hanging on my wooden "Give Thanks" sign that my dad made me is also from the Target dollar spot. You have to put it together, but it was really easy and turned out so cute!

I always try to incorporate a candy dish on my buffet and fill it with m&m's, so when I saw this adorable apple for $3 at Target, I knew it would be perfect for that. I also thought it would be cute to add a picture of the kids from the first day of school last year. The clipboard I have is from Target as well and cost less than $3. I just added a piece of the kids art work to it.

 I already had the little red chalkboard, so I used that along with the cute little ceramic pencil, which was also from Target for $1. I made the "Back to School" print using PicMonkey and just framed in a 5x7 frame I already had.

And finally, this cute little ceramic apple that I have sitting next to my globe was also from Target for only $1.

So I'd love to know, do any of you decorate for Back to School? It wasn't something I had ever thought about doing before, but I love the way it turned out and I plan on doing it every year now because it was so much fun!

Baby Girl's Nursery Plans

So I've been thinking a lot about our sweet girl's nursery! The plan is to get through Christmas and New Years and then get started on moving the office downstairs and making the office a nursery!

We have 3 bedrooms and a finished basement. The third bedroom has always been Jake's office, but we always knew that if we had 2 children while living in this house, the office would become a bedroom at that time and we'd just move the desk and computer to the finished basement. My dad is in the process of building us a bathroom downstairs, so that will be so nice when it gets done. 

But, back to Baby Girl's nursery! I'm loving everything about this nursery.

I love the crib, the colors and I love the idea of a chandelier for a light fixture!

So here are some of my ideas that I've pinned on Pinterest. 

The Crib and Changing Table

I love this gallery wall and would love to do this on one of the nursery walls. I already have a couple of frames ready for paint. :-)

My sister is going to make the bedding and curtains, but I love this and would like her to make something very similar but with a little chevron mixed in.

I've pinned these 2 chandeliers, but haven't decided which one to go with yet. The nursery isn't a big room, so we may go with the smaller one. They are both from Home Depot.

The smaller one...

and the larger one. 

I'd love to make some of these to hang on her walls.

Then I saw this yesterday and just love it! My dad said he can make one for her room, so I can't wait!!

I still have to pick out a dresser for her and I definitely want to make a cute little banner and a mobile for her room along with decorating letters that spell out her name, same as I did for Jackson's nursery. I also will make some pom poms and other decorative things I'm sure. I really can't wait to get started!! :-)

A Living Room Wall Make-Over

This past week, I did a little make-over on one of our living room walls. I'm really liking the way it turned out. 

Here's the before and after pictures.

Jackson is so tall that he can reach pretty much anything on this table. He loves to get the frames and its a constant battle with him. :-( I miss being able to set all kinds of pretty stuff out.

So my solution to the problem was to hang the pictures somehow. I moved our wedding photo over to our photo gallery on another wall in our living room. (I'll show you that re-do when I get it all finished). I decided to buy some 8x10 frames matted down to 5x7. They were only $3 each at Walmart! These pictures are all family pictures of both mine and Jake's immediate family (i.e. parents and siblings). I bought the "Family" and "Home" signs at Hobby Lobby for 50% off and only spent $20 total between the 2 signs. I thought I could put the Home sign back far enough that maybe Jackson couldn't get to it. The other stuff on the table is just for this picture. :-( I had to put it all away after taking the pictures because I know he would get into it.

Here are a few close-ups.

And here's a picture that shows the full wall.

Saw It. Pinned It. Did It.

I'm linking up here for:

This was a pretty simple thing to do, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. 

I saw this one on Pinterest and new I could try and make one for my own house. I made a much simpler one for our living room gallery wall when I first added the gallery, but I just used a simple font from word with no color. So I thought this idea was much cuter. I used PicMonkey to make the new one and then just had it printed at Walgreen's since I'm all out of ink in my printer right now. ☺

I changed up the font and added the date that Jake and I started dating, to fill up more white space. Plus the little saying at the bottom says "first comes love" so I thought that date should be on there! Here's my version, before printing and framing.

And here it is printed, framed and hanging on the wall! I love it and it was super easy!

So easy in fact, that I made one for my sister too, and I just might make a few more and frame them for Christmas gifts! 

 What have you been pinning and making lately?

A Couple Home Decorating Updates

Our house doesn't really have much of a hallway. But there is a decent sized wall leading into the hallway, from the dining room, that I had a couple frames with pictures from our wedding in.

This is what it looked like before.

And here it is now!

I just used the same frames, but hung them going up and down instead of side to side. I took the wedding pictures out and added pictures of Jackson. I have a ton of great pictures of Jackson and I wanted to be able to display them somehow and thought this would be a great way to do that. My Sister-in-Law had gotten me the Family Frame for my birthday, so I added pictures of our little family of 3 to it. Then the "S" I got from Hobby Lobby for 50% off (making it around $5). So this was a very inexpensive re-do on our little hallway wall.

Here's a close-up.  

Then I also bought a clock for our living room over the weekend. I had been wanting something to fill this blank space for a while. I had gone back and forth on what I wanted to hang there, but I ultimately decided on a clock because we didn't have one for our living room and with feeding and nap-time schedules for Jackson, I thought a clock would be helpful. So I found this one at Wal-Mart and really liked it. It was the size and color I was looking for and I loved that it had several words on it like, Family and Love. It goes really well with our living room decor.

A close up of the clock.

So those were a couple of things that I got done over the weekend that I had been wanting to do for a while. Have you done any fun home updates lately?

Living Room Re-Do and Ideas

When we moved into our house, (almost 5 years ago) I didn't really do a whole lot with the living room. I just left it kind of a plain and simple, which was okay for a while. But now I am getting kind of bored with it and wanted a change.

Before:

Since I hadn't really done much with the room, and the colors were very neutral, I figured I kind of had a blank canvas to work with, which is nice. I wanted to add some color to it to brighten it up a bit. So I started searching around on Pinterest (where else?) to get some ideas. Our sectional came with some toss pillows that were brown and a deep red, so thats kinda what the color scheme had been in there. However, one of our dogs had chewed a couple of the corners of the pillows, so needless to say they needed to be recovered. I found some fabric I liked at Hobby Lobby (I had a gift card, ☺) and asked my sister if she wouldn't mind using the fabric to recover the pillows I had. Her being the sweet sister that she is, said sure and even made a cute table runner for my entry table with the remaining left-over fabric. I would still like to either buy or have my sister make a few more toss pillows bringing out the blue and green in the patterned fabric I already have.

A close-up of the new pillows.

A close-up of the table runner my sister made.

Table runner. This pictures shows pretty well the colors in the fabric.

The table runner on my entry table.

I also wanted to add a gallery of frames to our main wall in the living room that only had 2 frames and a wall sconce on it (very boring). After seeing several ideas on Pinterest, I took the plunge and organized my frames and what I wanted to put in them. Then I tried arranging them on the floor, which didn't really work too well, but got the ball rolling. I then tried measuring it all out and finally started hammering away. I'm super happy with my gallery wall! Now I'd like to spray paint a few of the frames to match some of the colors in my toss pillows. I just want to add some color and since all the frames are black right now, a couple cans of spray paint should do the trick to adding some color. I got the sign at Hobby Lobby for 50% off! Can't beat a bargain like that. :-)

The pictures on the wall from left to right are of our engagement, wedding pregnancy and family. The top two smaller frames are prints I found online, one of family and one of "You are my Sunshine" (the song we sing to Jackson to calm him down). The numbers on the far right are my birthday, Jake's birthday, our anniversary and Jackson's birthday.

Then I ordered some cross sconces from Partylite about 1 1/2 ago that I never hung up. I decided to hang them finally and really like the way they look over our chair. 

Then over the weekend I found this collage frame on sale at Michaels for half price, then they had a coupon where you got an additional 25% off. So I bought it since I had been wanting a collage frame for this wall. We used to have our engagement picture hanging on this wall, but since I used it for the gallery wall in the living room, I needed something else to go there. The collage frame is much larger than I guess I realized in the store. I'm not totally sure I love it here yet since its so big for this wall. But it is starting to grow on me. I filled it with pictures of our families (Parents, Grandparents, Brothers, Sisters and Nieces and Nephews and of course Jackson, ☺.

Now moving on to some ideas I've found to add to the room. The part of the wall between our t.v. and closet still needs something I feel like. I found this really cool sign on Pinterest and plan to order it, from the etsy store it originated from, in the near future.

via

Then I'd also like to add a few new touches to my entry table. I like picture frames sitting on it, but I'd like to add a few other things too (like a tray of some kind and some decorative vases and maybe a wooden "S") and probably get rid of the infinite reflections piece on top. I've just had it a while and am ready for something new. Here are a few entry tables I've found on Pinterest that I like.

I love the tray on this table. 

I like the little framed sign on this table.

I like the addition of a small lamp and I like the framed "S".

I like the letters and the & sitting on this table.

So thats my long post about how I'm changing (still in the process) some things around in our living room. Every once in a while I just need a change and I thought our living room would be a great place since we didn't have much going on in there anyways.