Dressing Up My Nest

For weeks now, our dining room has been a combination of bare white walls and a small table and chairs. It has been in dire need of dressing up! So last week I put up the gorgeous wood cabinet that The Nerd's grandpa built many years ago:

I am going with a color scheme of robin's egg blue and brown; my modern paisley frame seemed

perfect for the top of the cabinet:

I found some pretty distressed ceramic birds at Craft Warehouse to perch on the shelves. The postcards are from a fun tongue-in-cheek shop called DippyLulu's. I needed some gentle reminders for my kids that whining is not allowed! :)

Some vintage-look items from my kitchen fit perfectly behind the mesh door of the cabinet:

And a real bird's nest (abandoned) is nestled on the bottom shelf, filled with darling felted eggs.

On another wall, I set up Message Central, with a sparkly memo board, our white board/cork board combo, and our calendar. I have a tutorial for making the calendar board at my craft blog, The Scrappy Frog.

Just trying to make my nest a little prettier...

Tackle It Tuesday - Entry Way Panels

Our "new" house has a lot of character, and while I may be embracing some of its more quirky features, these lacy things on the entryway windows had to go. The faded white lace pieces had been attached to the windows with string and thumbtacks, a "mistreatment" that even the Nester would not ignore.
I decided to choose a fabric with some robin's egg blue in it, as the front door and all surrounding paneling are painted that color. I fell in love with this gorgeous chocolate/blue damask from JoAnn's and used a little over a yard of it to make double-sided curtain panels with brown pom-pom trim. I love the new look - it feels completely different than the lace and thumbtacks!

And although we are still unpacking and trying to figure out where everything goes, at least the entryway looks polished and completed. Task tackled!

More tackles at 5 Minutes for Mom...