I have had my eye on one of Serena & Lily’s beautiful hanging chairs for years, and when Lawson told me he wanted a “beach” themed room, I knew it was the perfect time to splurge! He thinks I got it for him, but really it’s for me, haha! When placing the order, I assumed the chair would come with hardware and instructions, but when it came in the mail, I realized it didn’t. I thought it would be helpful if I shared how we installed it! It ended up being super easy! What you’ll need: Serena & Lily Hanging chair Mounting Hardware – (We chose this one so that the swing could rotate 360 degrees, fun!!) Stud Finder Impact Driver  (we used a socket adaptor bit on our impact driver to make installation fast and easy, but you could also just use a socket wrench set) First thing you will need to do is use your stud finder to locate the ceiling joist! We have this stud finder, and it works great! Once you find a stud that is in a good location for your swing, mark it with a pencil on either side. Once your stud is marked, you can install your mounting plate! Brett decided to hold the plate in place and drill a regular screw into it first to make sure he was for sure hitting the stud! He was! So he put in the heavy duty screws that came with the mounting hardware. This is where we used the socket adaptor bit on the impact driver, but you could easily use a socket wrench. Now it is time to tie your knot! The swing is looped so that there are two ropes that need to be tied together at the top. This was the part I was scared of, because I wanted to make sure it would be super sturdy (the swing is for me remember? ha!) Brett did a quick google search to figure out what kind of knot we needed to tie. He was able to follow the diagram below, but I bet you could find a tutorial on youtube as well! Brett tied it at the ends of the ropes at first, but was able to adjust them later so that the swing sat farther off the ground. Then, Brett held up the swing, and we decided how low we wanted it to hang. We settled on 18.5 inches (to the front ledge of the chair) from the ground. You will want it a little higher than you think, because it will sink a bit when you sit in it (or a lot if you just ate a lot of cookies LOL). We did ours a tad lower just because we wanted Lawson to be able to climb in and out of it easily, plus the rope can be adjusted later as he grows! Add a comfy blanket and a pillow and it will definitely be your favorite place to rest! I am so glad that it ended up being easy to hang. Where else can I put one!? …. …..jk, hubs. <3

Start With a Blank Powerpoint Slide Find the Product You Want Head to your website of choice, find your product, and choose an image that is most like a stock photo with a white or contrasting background if possible. Right-click, and choose ‘Copy Image.’ If this option doesn’t appear, you can screenshot the image. On a Mac, hold ‘shift+command+4’ and drag the box around the image. It will automatically save to your desktop folder. On a PC, use the snippet tool and copy from there. Paste Your Image Right click on your blank slide, and choose paste. If you had to screenshot your image on a Mac, click the ‘Insert’ tab at the top left, and choose ‘Picture’ and then ‘Picture from file.’ You will be able to quickly find the screenshot in your desktop folder. Remove Background Double click your image and a remove background button should appear at the far left under the ‘Picture Format’ tab at the top. Fine Tune Your Image Once you click on the ‘Remove Background’ button, pink areas will appear around your product. First, you will want to make sure to expand the box that appears so that your entire product is inside of it. Then click on background areas in the photo that you want to add or remove by using the + and – buttons. You can either click or draw lines as shown above. When you’re finished, click “keep changes.” (Sometimes there will be images that will not work and in that case I still move the image into place and leave the white background or crop as much around it as I can). Resize Your Image Resize your image and move it into place! Continue Adding Products When adding images, first remove the background and then you may have to send some backward or bring some forward in order to layer them properly. Keep Decorating!! I like to keep adding items! Add in windows where there are windows in your room. Draw shiplap with lines. You can try a bunch of different pillow options to see which you like best! It is so fun once you get the hang of it! Happy Decorating! Tag me in stories and share your designs!

I know, its old news now. But I am just getting around to adding all the details of our move down the street to the blog! If you haven’t heard yet, we are closing soon on a house just down the street, that is ON THE LAKE. I am so excited I could cry. We can’t wait for new projects and to make it ours. The biggest perk, besides being on the lake, is that we will be right next door to my parents! There is a small trail through the trees between us. Talk about a HUGE blessing!!! So how did we get here?? We started looking at houses last Summer just for fun. We even put in an offer on a fixer upper, which thankfully fell through. Meanwhile, I would be sitting on my parents’ back porch watching this beautiful home just across the trees being built. We finally decided to walk through it and I almost cried when I walked up the stairs. I had this immediate gut feeling that it was OURS. Fast forward a few months and now we are about to move in!!! We happened to have potential buyers reach out during this time that said they wanted to buy our current home if we were still planning on selling! It was so important to me to have buyers that really wanted and appreciated what hard work and love we had put into it. Let’s talk about the new house!! We signed the contract on it a little late in the game so we weren’t able to choose all of the finishes. It has been a little frustrating to watch them install things we don’t love, but ultimately I am just excited to move in and make it ours either way! We were able to change the flooring to something we LOVE and a couple of other things. The house sits right on Lake Houston, with a fenced in backyard and has bald eagles that fly over everyday. (Have I mentioned how excited I am to become a bird watcher in this house!? ha!) That’s my Dad’s dock!! Writing another post all about our plans for the house and details of things that are going in! You can read that HERE. Make sure to follow along on Instagram for more behind the scenes of the move and projects @thebloomingnest!

We are getting SO close to move in day! They haven’t actually given us a specific close date yet but the house should be finished by the end of this week. I can’t believe it!! I wanted to give you a few updates and save some house details here! If you missed it, we signed on this house a little late in the game so we weren’t able to pick out all of the finishes. To me, that just means more creativity in the design process and I am so excited! The house has dark kitchen cabinets, which are beautiful by the way, but aren’t necessarily very “blooming nest.” We will be having them painted along with so many other fun plans I have to make the kitchen unique and more my style. We were able to pick the flooring for the entire house! We went with a 9″ wide plank vinyl flooring in the main areas of the downstairs. I will link it here  (ours are the color Riverside Oak). We chose a beautiful carpet with a plush carpet pad for all the bedrooms and the upstairs areas. I haven’t found a link to it yet but it is made by Shaw Floors. In our bathrooms and laundry room we did a beautiful large white tile with small gray veining. We begged and begged for them to paint the house in Chantilly Lace by Ben Moore for us (my favorite color), but it was a hard NO. So the walls are the builders’ version of Alabaster by Sherwin and the trim throughout the house is extra white by sherwin. The banisters are another project I am so excited to tackle! We don’t love how the builder mixed super modern with super traditional. I am not sure how we will transform them yet but I do know that it will be a HUGE change! There are so many stair railings in our home because of the open concept that I definitely want them to be sleek and understated. My brain is absolutely EXPLODING with ideas for this house. If only we could move in and make it all happen at once! But our budget doesn’t work that way so it will be a slow process! Designing each room keeps me up at night and also brings me so much joy! I can’t wait to show you all of my ideas!!! Kitchen makeover, built in bench seating, fireplace, dining table, sliding door, playroom storage and MORE!!! Thanks for being on this journey with us and for your constant love and support!

Five up-and-coming trends that I can’t wait to incorporate into our new home. Make sure to follow along on the blog and Instagram as we makeover our home on the lake!! (@thebloomingnest) Wallpaper on the Ceiling! Wallpaper photo source Joanna Gaines Bold Kitchen Cabinets! Kitchen photo source Caitlin Flemming Colorful Curtains! Curtains are from Anthropologie! Patterned Tile! Image source Joanna Gaines! Arches! Photo source Studio Mcgee!

It happened!! I fell in love with something that I had previously BEGGED the builder to change during the building process. Nope, its not the dark kitchen cabinets…. or the stair railing… It’s the wall paint color!!!! During the building process I was so disappointed when they wouldn’t let me pick the paint color. I almost cried at some points because they were going to spray every wall surface in the home before installing flooring and I just wanted them to do a color of my choice. They had a very small selection of Sherwin Williams paint colors you could choose from and none were what I wanted… So i thought. 😉 They painted the walls Alabaster and we had every intention of painting each room bright white Chantilly Lace by BM, the same color we had in our previous home, after moving in. But as the days went on in the new house…. I FELL IN LOVE! There was just one issue… BEFORE! I realized that I loved the warmth that Alabaster brought to our home. The only thing I didn’t love was the contrast between the warmth of Alabaster and the stark white (extra white) of the trim. Pictured above is the before… Alabaster walls, extra white trim and stained quarter round. I sent Brett to Sherwin Williams to grab a quart of Alabaster in gloss! I started taping off the floor and painting the baseboards the same color as the walls. It was like MAGIC!!! I am so happy I could cry! It erased the weird contrast that sometimes made Alabaster look yellow and now the walls and trim just looked like a beautiful creamy white! I plan to slowly work my way around the house painting the baseboards and quarter round. It is making such a huge impact that I think it will keep me motivated to keep going. This does mean that we will have to paint all of our interior doors since they are also Extra White. I think I may do them a warm griege color – but stay tuned for that 😉 AFTER! The builders chose to install wood stained quarter round in our home and we knew we eventually wanted to paint it white so I will be killing two birds with one stone. It is going to take some time, but it will be WAY more affordable than having our entire interior painted. I am so happy because I truly love the color even more than the stark white walls I thought I wanted!

Whew! This is going to be a HUGE project to tackle! We have sooo many stair railings in our new home. This also means that making it over will make a huge impact because it’s the first thing you see when you walk in! The builder chose very modern balusters and very traditional newel posts. When we purchased the house we figured we would just replace the parts we didn’t like, but you know me, I had to give it a shot and try to make it over on a budget! Spoiler alert! I think I’m going to be so happy with it! It’s giving me Anthropologie vibes 😉 BEFORE I went back and forth on what color to paint it. I decided to go with accessible beige by Sherwin Williams. I AM IN LOVE. It’s so creamy and warm and looks perfect with our alabaster walls and trim. I started by taping and taping some more! So much taping! But it makes the painting part go really quick! There were a couple of the shoe moulds that they forgot to glue down so I just lifted them out of the way. I used gloss finish in Accessible beige and my favorite paint brush from Zibra Painting. It took 3 full coats of paint on the parts that were already white and 4 full coats on the parts that were dark stained wood. I did not sand or do any prep besides tape. The paint covered great and I have no worries about it chipping because of the finish I chose. I am so happy with how it turned out…. that is, the tiny portion I have finished ha! Follow along because I have fun plans to make these stairs even more my style! Im going to makeover the newel posts next!

It’s Pigeon!!! My kitchen is PIGEON! I am so happy I could cry. My favorite color is in the heart of our home and it is bringing me JOY! I wanted to share all of the details about hiring out to have out cabinets painted! By the way, if you don’t know about the color Pigeon, I chat all about it in my “pigeon” highlight bubble on my Instagram profile, @thebloomingnest! It is a color by Farrow & Ball. I usually get it color matched at Home Depot or Sherwin Williams! We also lightened it by 25% for this project! Here is a photo of the exact number code we used! We knew when we bought this house, and they wouldn’t let us change the cabinet color, that we would be having them painted after moving in! I did not trust myself to tackle this project on my own because of the prep work it takes, so we decided to hire out! I asked in my neighborhood facebook group if anyone had recommendations on cabinet painters. A name popped up a few different times so I called him to come out and give us a quote. I knew right away after chatting with him for a few minutes that he was a great fit! Very professional and I loved that he explained how the whole process would go. If you want his contact I would be happy to give it to you! His name is Louis Jasso at Inov8tive Paint out of Humble, TX. We picked a date for them to come pick up our cabinet doors and drawer fronts. They took them to their shop to prep and paint them and then would come back a week later to paint the cabinet frames and install the doors! On painting day they prepped the kitchen for a couple of hours. Taping off the whole room and covering countertops and floors. They also set up a large fan to extract the fumes out the back door! It took them from about 9am-3pm to finish painting and reinstalling the doors and drawer fronts. This was great because I was really only out of a kitchen for one day! When I walked in to see the finished product I was so so happy!!! The paint was so smooth and the color was perfect!!! BEFORE Prices will range depending on where you live and who you hire. But we paid around $3900 for this job. It was an expense we planned in our budget when buying the house and is was 100% worth it to me! But there are plenty of DIY tutorials out there if you decide you would rather tackle it on your own! Read about how we added the cabinet molding to the ceiling HERE!

The project that took 2 months to finish! 242 spindles to tape and paint around!! It really was not a difficult project whatsoever, just super tedious, and we have soooo much stair railing in our new home. Not fun to makeover, but it is what makes our home feel so open and spacious! From taping off each spindle, to the amount of coats of paint, caulking and sanding, it took us a while to pull this one off, but it was SO worth it! We saved thousands by making over these newel posts and railings ourselves rather than having it all replaced. Keep reading to see how simple this makeover was and how you can do it yourself! I started by painting all of the trim and handrails on the stairs. You can read all details about that HERE. The we grabbed a saw and started cutting off the little balls, that were not so very Blooming Nest style, on top of the newel posts! Many of the inso pics that I liked had very simple square newel posts. I knew we could achieve the same look by just removing these balls. Too bad they didn’t just screw off. Next, we sanded down the tops of the newel posts for a smooth finish! We bought a bunch of 1/2 half circle dowels from Lowes. We cut them to the length that we wanted them to hit on each newel post and cut the top end at a 45 degree angle, using a miter saw, for a softer edge. Then, we nailed them around each post! This was so gratifying because slowly they covered up the part I didn’t love about the original posts! Three dowels fit perfectly on each side with a tiny gap in-between them that we would fill with caulk. We made sure to nail downward into the post, making sure the dowel was fully secure. To finish them off, we caulked all the seams, wood filled the nail holes and painted 2 coats of Accessible beige! Pretty simple, huh!? If you have a normal amount of stairs this would be such a fast and easy project to makeover your traditional newel posts. I love the modern vibe they bring to our home and I am a sucker for anything with a scalloped detail. BEFORE & AFTER PHOTOS You can read about the gallery wall on our stairs HERE. You can read about painting our stairs HERE.

It’s bound to happen when you’re in the middle of renovations. I really try to plan everything out and draw up design boards to make sure I am going to love everything before we purchase anything…BUT…. Here was the original design plan! A few things have changed along the way. All changes that I am SO excited for!!! When we got the custom cabinets that we ordered hung up in the kitchen I just knew they were too big. Not too big in general, I thought they were GORGEOUS and I am the one that ordered the exact size of them. But I really, REALLY want our custom backsplash to be the star of the show and I just felt like the cabinets were going to hide a lot of the backsplash… I also knew I didn’t want floating shelves… So we are adding WINDOWS!!! WHAT?! I am a little nervous because this is a big project, and the exterior wall is brick. But we have an amazing general contractor and I know he is going to do a great job. One problem… windows are almost impossible to find in stock right now, just like so many things! To order a custom size window you are going to have to wait 8-10 weeks minimum. This would be fine, but I have kitchen content that is due way before then. So we are now on a mission to find 2 windows that will work for our kitchen! We are going to check out the building surplus store in our area. Fingers crossed!! And now for the question you’re all asking yourselves… “But what are you going to do with those pretty custom cabinets!?” I am so happy you asked 😉 The only way I was okay with switching up our kitchen design was if we had a spot to use the custom cabinets, because I truly loved them so much! We are going to build them into our entryway! We started on this project yesterday so I will be sharing more details soon but it is going to be so beautiful!!! Make sure to follow along on Instagram, @thebloomingnest, for behind the scenes videos of all of our projects!

BEFORE It’s an exciting day over here!! They are finally cutting through the brick exterior to add windows to our kitchen! You can read about why we decided to have this done HERE. I have a feeling you know about all of the building supply shortages in the country right now. Well, windows are one of them. When we decided to add windows to the kitchen we could NOT find anyone who could get us custom size windows in a decent amount of time. Brett decided to order double pane glass from a local glass company and build the windows himself! I am so impressed with how well they turned out!! Our contractor first started by demoing the wall in the kitchen from the interior. We had to have a plumber come out to reroute the gas line that ran behind the wall, and they also had to scoot down some of the electrical wires. Then they cut out the brick from the outside of the house and framed in the beautiful windows that Brett built! One of the workers snapped this photo for me while I was out of town! The anticipation was killing me! They sheet-rocked the wall, started the backsplash (you can find our backsplash HERE, we have the large star and cross in the color Sand Dune – I”M OBSESSED) and hung the frame for the range hood that Brett built! We had them go ahead and add sheetrock around the range hood as well. We plan to add plaster to it, but honestly I am loving it SO much already!!!! THE BEFORE ONE MORE TIME FOR THE DRAMATIC EFFECT LOL AFTER I truly CANNOT believe this is my kitchen!! EEEEEK!!! It has so many features that I love so so much! Next up we plan to tackle the island. We want to square it off and add some trim to the front! Stay tuned!

Source: @bestfriendsforfrosting I am determined to have a beautiful fireplace in our living room before it is time to decorate for the holiday season! “Brett! Did you hear that!?” 😉 Plans are underway and I am so excited! I haven’t finalized everything but I do know the overall shape that I want and we did order our fireplace insert a couple of weeks ago, which by the way, is the coolest insert ever!!! Source: https://petitemodernlife.com/european-inspired-fireplace-designs/ Our options for adding a fireplace to our living room were to either have a plumber come bust out sheetrock and run a gas line or do another electric insert like we did in our previous home (pictured below). Read about our previous DIY fireplace HERE. We do live in Houston, Texas so the electric insert was great for our last home! But this time I really wanted a real flame. A Blooming Nester told me to look into the brand Hearth Cabinet. My mind was blown!!! A real flame insert that runs on alcohol gel cartridges so it is completely safe to burn in your home!!!! They are pricey but it would’ve also been pricey to have a gas line run, then buy a ventless gas insert and then we would have gas fumes in our home whenever we turned it on. So I felt like it was worth the money and was the perfect solution! I can’t wait to share more about it when our insert comes in!! It will be a couple of months because everything is backordered. I went with a pearl gold color and I think it is going to be unique and beautiful! I am leaning toward the bottom of our fireplace being a beautiful tile, either something with texture or pattern. I want the bump out to go to the ceiling (2 stories), and a large wrap around mantle!! Source: https://furnishlifestyle.com/ The awesome thing is, even though we are waiting on our insert to come in, we can get started on building the structure because the insert is completely stand alone! Doesn’t even need a plug! Here are a few designs I have drawn up! I don’t think any of them are JUST right but it gives you an idea of what I am picturing!