New floors in the office and the BIG project I'm starting

Well hello! I hope you've had a great week! One of my big goals for this year is to finish a BIG project in my office. I cannot wait to get this started! 

Most of my books and craft supplies are in the basement storage room and I'm excited to get them put away. To do that I need to build a wall of bookcases...but to that I had to start with the floors. Here's a look at my office how it looked last week: 

We priced out putting hardwoods in here when we were building (and having the builder do it) -- but there's a point in the building process where you start sweating at the thought of adding one. more. thing. I figured if I wanted hardwoods later we could do it for less anyway. 

When we moved in we liked having some carpet again. It didn't last long. 😂 I'm remembering why we got rid of most of it at our old house. Hard floors are so much easier to care for with animals. Our dog did a number on this carpet right after moving in (I think due to stress of the move initially). 

So anyway, we've known for awhile that the hardwoods were going in here, but the budget didn't allow for it till this month. I made some calls a few weeks ago and found out our hardwoods were discontinued. Whaaaa wahhh. After a bit of panic, I made some calls to the manufacturer, Diamond Living, and they were incredibly helpful. Within a day I had a call from a store here in Indiana that had some boxes left. We got enough for my office and our master for later. Whew!! 

I pulled up the carpet myself (if you need tips on how to do that you can see how I removed carpet from our stairs here) and then we had someone install them for us. Wow what a difference!:

I still have to install and paint the quarter round, but we are loving the floors!! It looks like it should have always been like this, which is always a win in my book. 

The rug used to be in our foyer, and it was SUPER inexpensive. It wore pretty quickly, but that's perfect for this spot (at least for now) because I needed a thin rug for my rolling desk chair: 

I feel like the room needed the contrast of the wood floors: 

But this view is going to change significantly soon! 

Now comes the FUN part and I can hardly wait to get started! The big project will be on this back wall: 

First up, I need to have electrical run for lights. This wall is almost exactly the same width as the bookcases I built at our old house: 

So I'm planning on using four cabinets and four lights again. The bookcases themselves will be very similar -- but because I don't have to deal with a thermostat and light switch like I did before, the shelves will be spaced out more evenly. 

I plan to do the wood top again, but this time I'm going darker with the built ins -- not sure on the color just yet! 

I need to find lights soon and these are all options I'm considering. Thankfully over the years the options for affordable "library" lights have improved greatly. You can see the lights I used for the old bookcases here. I had to get creative! 

I love this option -- it has the adjustable arm (affiliate) I love but doesn't take up a ton of vertical space: 

You have to watch traditional swing arm sconces on bookcases because the header isn't usually deep enough to accommodate the arm height. This one would work well though! 

I also love this sconce with the pretty slope, but it may be a little too big: 

And these are smaller options that would work well too! They are identical to the sconces I have in our mud room: 

All great options!

So once I get the lights run I'm on my way! I'm hoping to do that this month, then I can start installing the cabinets. I use upper cabinets for the bases, and you can see how I make them look built in here. I use uppers because they don't take up as much room, and they don't have the drawer that traditional base cabinets have. I used kitchen cabinets a LOT in our old house -- you can see all the ways I used cabinets as built ins here.

As always I'll take you along for the ride! This project will take a few months to complete -- it's a doozy. But it will be so worth it! Have you built any bookcases using my tricks? :)


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How to make an IT'S SO FLUFFY!! bunny Easter wreath

Hey there! I'm back with a fun spring project. :) I know Easter is a good five weeks away, but our weather drastically improved along with the time change, so it's feeling like spring! Knowing the Midwest, we'll have snow again at some point...but I'm enjoying it for now. 

I got this idea when I was browsing online recently. I can't remember where I found it, but I found the cutest bunny wreath -- and I knew I could replicate it for less. Turns out I spent a little more, but mine is double the size. I call that a win! And it's just stinking adorable. Or adoyable as my niece would say. 

I'll list all of the items I used on this project at the bottom of the post, but here's how it came together! I started with a foam wreath form from the craft store. Mine is 14 inches: 

Then I found some soft yarn in white: 

For this wreath you'll want to make a bunch of yarn pom poms -- I've never made them but have seen this DIY many times. The size will depend on what you use to wrap your yarn and how many times you do it. I used my hand at first -- four fingers.

I quickly realized I needed something that was the same size all around. I grabbed my level and used that to wrap the yarn:

You could use anything -- even a strip of cardboard. I wrapped the yarn 40 to 50 times for each pom. Then you cinch it in the middle with a smaller piece of yarn. To get the fluffy look, you cut the yarn as I showed above.

You're left with a fluffy yarn ball. Usually you'd trim these down a bit so the pieces are even, but I didn't worry about that yet:

I could have hot glued these on, but I knew that would be a mess, so I opted for these floral pins instead: 

They worked like a charm! You'll probably need to change your spacing as you go, so I highly recommend these instead of glue.

I don't know how many poms I made, but it was two skeins worth. I thought it would take me MUCH longer to make them than it did. I wrapped them as I watched TV and it was easy work. 

I needed some ears, so I searched for a pattern and found a bunny ear pattern here. I cut it out, and then cut out the middle (pink) part of the ear. I used a stiffer felt for the white, or main part of the ears so they would have some structure: 

And then I traced and cut out the pink part of the ears and hot glued those on: 

You could free hand them as well, but the pattern is handy! 

I attached the ears to the back of the wreath form with the floral pins, and then used a tack and some hot glue to create a hook for the door: 

We have a brushed nickel 3-M hook on our door and that felt piece was the perfect way to hang this! 

When I was done with the wreath I may have squealed like a little girl: 

I mean...come on! It's so FLUFFY!! (Name that movie.):

I ended up trimming some scraggly pieces of yard off before I hung it.

It took me about an hour to finish up the whole wreath and I just LOVE it. I made the family come out and check it out too. I may have also driven by our house a couple times already just to see it on the door: 

It would also be cute if you did the ears in just white, and then added a pink or gray pom pom as a a bunny tail on the bottom of the wreath. Mine is the front view, but the back view would be fun too. :)

I spent about $17 but if you could grab your yarn for half off you'd spend more like $13. (I used a coupon for the wreath form.)

It's it the cutest? I love it so. I wouldn't recommend yarn for a door that gets exposed to the elements, but you could always bring it in if needed. 

Here's a list of the items I used (affiliate links included):

Floral pins

Similar yarn

Foam wreath

White felt with sticky back

Pink felt, sticky back

You can see the how-to for this easy spring tulip wreath here: 

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