Down on Nicholson Ave.: The Nest

Our House
In the Middle of the Street
Our House

It seriously is right in the middle of the street.

I love my neighborhood.

Always have.

My parents raised me just two blocks down, on the same street, in the same house layout, that I live in now. I love it!

I love it so much that I thought I would share some pics. : )

Welcome! Come on in!

Won't you join me for a cup of coffee?

My favorite chair, loved and worn.

A glance around the living room. Thanks mom and dad for the wonderful Christmas gift of new furniture! We love it!

Other end of the living room, just past the built in book shelf is the door to my craft room.

I'll be posting more pictures as I go along.

I hope you come visit again soon!

~nic

The Guest Bathroom

This last weekend we decided to tackle our guest bathroom. A few years back our landlord had updated the space but we had yet to give it our touch. It was just your basic beige bathroom with nothing fancy. Not even a nice smelling candle. No pictures, no matching towels, no love. Well...not anymore!

I had the shower curtain from an office beach party I did. I've always loved it and really have been waiting to use it. It seemed like the perfect time! So, we went with the beach theme.

Hubby loves this picture, he picked it out from IKEA. It really is the PERFECT picture for a bathroom, for bathroom art's sake. The bottle on it's side is actually a homemade beach in a bottle. We made these for Justin's last birthday part at Family Camp. The glass bottle contains bits and pieces of shells from Anchor Bay.

This isn't your typical bathroom cabinet, but I love it! My daddy made this for me quite a few years ago. I had used it in our kitchen when he first made it, but it has since migrated into various rooms. However, I think once it's painted white, it has found it's permanent home. I still need to get some small guest toiletries to fill in the cabinet and some hand towels and washcloths, but you guys get the picture. : )

This vase is filled with those little slivers of soap that you never quite use up. They either end up stuck to the bottom of the tub, or you add it to your new bar of soap. Not me. I plunk them in this vase in memory of my grandmother. She had a large white and blue ginger style jar that she saved all her soap chips. I always loved it and can't wait for mine to reach the amount she had.

Cool blue shell I found at Ross and filled with our drift wood pieces from Anchor Bay.

Awesome brown and blue plate I found at Ross on clearance for $1.99. I had seen it on a previous Ross stop, but passed it up. Then when I went to shop for the new bathroom items, I ran across it again...but in clearance! Woot woot!

So there you have it, our beautiful beachy bathroom.

And guess who's behind the curtain enjoying the first bath? Yup, you guessed right. Hubby!

~nic

My Craft Room

The first picture (below) of my craft room is looking in from the door of the living room. The room is basically just a covered porch. They left the floor, the stucco exterior walls, and even the bedroom and bathroom windows. But they did install ALL of these lovely windows that overlook the backyard. Yes, it does get freezing out here in the winter, and HOT as Africa in here during the summer. But, it's all mine and I love it! Believe it or not, 95% of the furniture in this room, I got for FREE. Yup, drop leaf table, free on the curbside. Chair left over from friend, read from blankie to swanky. Red button hutch, free in Santa Clara spring clean up week. Gorgeous work tables with pull out drawers, they used to have doors as well, but they didn't work in my space so I removed them, free from work because we just went through a major revamp. Funny thing about those, they were mine at work as well. I loved them the day I walked in and started working there. The hutch on top of one of the work tables, free from Santa Clara spring clean up week. Okay, I did pay 2 whole bucks for that cream with red lampshade lamp. I know right? Don't hate me. ; )

This picture (below) is now standing in front of my table looking towards the house. You can see the bedroom window I'm talking about. Makes it a little difficult to craft late at night, as that's Justin's room. That's why I have multiple lighting in the room. I have my work table lamp, my shandy over the storage tables and I even have one of those natural light work lights, my mom gave me for Christmas a few years ago. I leave that one a little more portable so I can move it to where I'm working at the moment. You can see it tucked in the back corner by the hutch in the top picture. Okay, back to this picture below. These drawers on this side hold all of my material and felt. The top drawer on the left holds all of my need right now / go to tools. See the darling little shabby chic night stand holding my dollhouse? Got two of 'em...for FREE! Yup, I love CL! I'll show you the other one in a minute. And see the long low brown shelving unit? I have two of those as well. They used to hang above my pull out drawers at work. Took those for free too! The awesome vintage wood 7 up crate came from my daddy. We had a bunch growing up, but we are down to two, but I have them! This one keeps all my yarn. The clear bins on the bottom shelf hold all of my stamps. The top of this unit houses my scrapbook paper and a little unit with my Sizzix machine and dies.

Here we are at the other end to the long low brown shelving. (Below left, I'm now standing behind the pull out drawer unit.) You can see the little bathroom window in this shot. The white bookcase was a built in the home owners did as well. Odd thing about that one is that it's like a huge double sided bookcase. On the other side is a half bookcase with lower cabinet. There's a small bit of it in the last shot of my living room pictures. Total custom build. Can't imagine how they dreamed up that idea. Oh yea, and one last bit of info on that bookcase, it actually used to be three plate glass windows running vertically looking out onto the patio. I know this because we had the same thing in our house growing up. I can remember watching a many rainstorm from those windows. That's even the original porch light, not the fixture, we updated that, so I guess I should say, that's even the original light outlet that light up the outdoor porch. Not so exciting. But okay, you get the idea. They didn't change anything, just added the room on.

Okay, we have now made a full circle around the room. The top right picture is of the corner to the right of my work table. They also built this unit in. We've had this situated as a closet with rods before, but I obviously didn't need hanging area so in went the shelves. Again, they had doors but doors and crafting just don't seem to mix. So the little white cube in the middle of the "mess" is my sewing cube. It doesn't actually hold my sewing basket, but it holds all my patterns, stuffing and odds and ends. The brown cardboard drawer unit holds all of my Christmas ribbon. Now people, when I say, do you need some ribbon? You say, yes Nicole I do. I will give you Christmas ribbon. Honestly, that's not even all of it. There is a black garbage full of it shoved into one of those upper white cabinets. Want to know where it all comes from? Casa de Sharon! My mother in law buys the M-O-S-T gooorrrrgggeeeooouuusss Christmas ribbon there is. I save every piece. Okay, actually it's Justin that saves it on Christmas day for mommy. I love him! Onward. The purple, pink and yellow plastic bins hold all of my doll house furnishings and supplies. I REALLY need to work on my doll house. The black three drawer bin that you can barely see behind the green foam pieces (re-covering project for my brother) holds all of my shop the house items. Decor pieces that I like to switch out and freshen the place up with. Favorites that can be used over and over. In the top slender open shelving, the right side holds all of my beads, and the left holds my Cricut and friends. In the cabinets are larger decor pieces, my bag o ribbon, and my real tool box. I keep a small stash of tools in here, rather then having to get up and go to the garage every time. Above it all, is my small, but growing collection of bee keepers. Yea, they should probably be hanging outside catching the bees, but they are so darn pretty I can't bare the thought of them filling up with tiny little carcass's. Is it just me?

Oh look! It's the other shabby chic night stand I got from CL. Don't you think it makes the perfect nook for my sewing machine? I do too! The red, blue and yellow vintage like suitcases came from Ross and hold my thread in the blue, lace and notions in the red, and some ribbon in the yellow. The wicker basket next to the table holds my paper cutters and rulers. Oh, and my back scratcher.

This is the hutch unit. Oh wait....Dexter calls..I'll be back to publish more!

So as I was saying, this little hutch unit holds a huge bulk of my crafting supplies. All the little odds and ends and tools and buttons and brads and alphabet letters, oh my! I used the hutch as sort of my display area. The top shelf has my two vintage Ken and Skipper carry boxes. I was going to use them to store crafting supplies, but they are so very vintage that I just didn't want the wear and tear on them. The little red Noah's ark, comes apart into many pieces. I don't know where the original ark came from, buy it started to become very fragile so my daddy copied the pieces and made a brand new one. We still have the original little wooden animals that go with it. I can't tell you how many little hands have been on both arks. The stuffed owl came from my ever so talented crafting duo, JP Squared. My middle brother Jeff and his daughter made us all one two years ago for Christmas. They seriously are UBBER talented. My niece even has her sites set on going to the Art Institute of S.F.. Rock it! Okay, the felt John bag I made for his work Valentines card exchange. Yes, he did use it and got Rave compliments about it! I love that he is man enough to show off my crafts, even if they are a bit girlie. The little red box is actually a paper little red riding hood picture book. You slide open the two sides and it opens up to a little scene which you can then pull up tabs and switch the scene to the next part of the story. I made it when I was heavy into my paper doll house making phase. The lower shelf of cubbies include family camp animals made by John and myself (Justin didn't make one that year, party pooper!) from items we found at the camp. I made the fish and John's little mouse is tucked in the back of the middle cubby. All of the little albums I made along with the felt circle ball thing. I don't know what you call those. The little candle filled teacups were made by my friend Ashley from Love meets Glue, go check her out. We basically started our blogs at the same time. We also work together as the Exec. Admin.'s of the company and wish we owned a fun crafting business instead. Give us some time...we're working on it. The plastic canvas Noah's Ark was made by John's mom for Justin when he was a baby. I need to repair it as little hands weren't really meant to play with it. The paper pinwheels I made from a template I found on Heather Bailey's site. The ribbon holder you see tucked under the entire hutch, was actually a hat display my daddy made me, but I recycled it into a ribbon holder. I've got some vintage enamel ware in there too, I just love that stuff! The cake holder on the side of the hutch came from our friends moms old bakery she owned. Another shabby piece I love.

These are more shots of random storage items, these my mom bought me. Almost her entire craft room sports these guys. Oh yea, she also has a dedicated sunny gorgeous craft room. Hmm...maybe she'll let me take some pictures and blog those as well. I could have a contest, whose is better? haha! More to come, Baseball calls!

Wow, this is turning into quite the long post. Can't help it, there is so much in a girls craft room!

Isn't she a beauty? Got her free last year in Santa Clara clean up. Now she houses ribbons, beads and buttons. I love all the little clear jars of colors, so tempting to just make all sorts of pretty things. Want to come over and play?

My shandy. I so love it! This one I actually bought, the rest of my shandy's I got for free from CL. (Don't hate, but one is even a total crystal shandy!) Anyways, this one was a cream shabby chic, but I wanted more of a pop against the white ceiling. The red crystals and red shades, minus the trim, came with the shandy. Quick coat of spray paint, and voila! Super fun and funky shandy!