Mint and Coral Kid's Bathroom

I love the updates we've made upstairs to Hannah's bathroom.  This is our upstairs hall bathroom and will most likely be the bathroom for any future kiddos.  I wanted to be able to easily transition it to a gender neutral bathroom in the future if needed by adding navy towels and different artwork.  I love the coral and mint color combination.  It's definitely a popular color choice these days in a lot of designs.

A little reminder of the before in our upstairs bathroom:

And the after:

First up, we painted all the trim in this room Benjamin Moore Simply White.  With three doorways, this was a big job for such a little space.  Also, you can tell the doors are different colors than the trim.  Someday, I will invest in a decent paint sprayer, and I can paint all the interior doors to match our trim.  For the walls, I went with Benjamin Moore Palladian Blue.  This was the color I used down in our laundry room, and I was able to get the whole bathroom painted with what we had leftover in our can.

Trim and Paint Before:

Trim and Paint After:

Before we were able to paint the walls though, we had to take down the builder grade mirror.  Weston did great and got it off in one piece.  Then Weston and my Dad took down the big light bar, and they installed two lights over each of our new mirrors.  Unfortunately, this required a few cuts into our wall because the wiring was strung across the wall rather than up to the attic then over to the switch.  It really wasn't difficult to patch it, and I already had to do the patch for the original light in the center.  This is what it all looked like before the drywall repair.

After I screwed our drywall patches back into place, I used drywall tape around each edge.

Followed by mudding over the tape and drywall screws.

Then it was sanding and painting the whole bathroom, and you would never know we had all those holes in our wall.  

I love the schoolhouse style globes on the lights.  I think it's a perfect look for a youthful kid's bathroom.  The lights came from Lowe's online, and they weren't available in the store.  The mirrors are from Pottery Barn, and I think they are really nice, quality mirrors.  I definitely recommend them!

There isn't a wall large enough for a towel bar without looking silly.  So I added two towel hooks I picked up from Home Depot.  The light pink towels are from JCPenney, and the coral color towels are from Target.  If we ever have a little boy, I think navy blue towels could easily be added into this color combo.

I went with a neutral extra tall shower curtain from Bed Bath and Beyond.  I always recommend tall shower curtains because it makes your bathroom feel larger by raising the eye.  The shower hooks were from Target, and I love the little flowers on them.

I added towel rings next to each sink after the oversized towel bars were removed, and the prints are from Minted.com that I framed myself.

The two navy cloverleaf bath mats were from Pottery Barn Teen.  I really like them, but my only complaint is they are a couple inches smaller than what they advertise on the item description online.  They're still good sized, but I had measured for something a little larger.

I loved this print from Hobby Lobby.

And another favorite update to the bathroom would be our linen closet.  The first time we walked through the house, I knew I wanted to change the shelving in the attached linen closet.

Before of the linen closet:

It was a complete wasted of space in our triangular shaped closet.  The towels wouldn't even fit on those tiny shelves.  They were only around 10" deep.

So we took it down and added our braces, making sure to hit the studs.

Followed by adding our boards that we cut to the shape of our closet with a little geometry work.

We finished it off with a little trim, and I love that we've probably doubled our storage space in that closet.

After linen closet:

So that's how we updated our upstairs bathroom into something fun and pretty for our daughter.

Christmas 2015

How many times have I written on here that I will regularly blog on the ole Front Porch Lemonades? I don't even want to know that answer, and it has come to my attention that folks (other than my mom) actually spend some time here reading about our family and the things we're doing.  So maybe I should pick this up consistently.  Santa left our family an iMac with a big screen that would be perfect for working with pictures and blogging.  So here we go!

What have we missed since I last blogged Hannah's Pooh Birthday party?  Well we've taken several fun trips including Disney World.  Updates to our master bedroom, entry, upstairs hall, Hannah's bathroom, upstairs hall, and bonus room.  I'm writing these all out here as a motivator for me to take pictures and share what we've done.

But first I want to include pictures of Christmas this year to have them documented!  We had a wonderful Christmas.  Hannah is getting to an age where she understands why we celebrate Christmas and the magic of it all.  We even went to see Santa, and Hannah sat on his lap and told him she would like "Two Mermaids and One Nemo".  Here's a picture I took on my cell of her picture with Santa.

We did Christmas shopping together at Hobby Lobby.

We decorated a gingerbread house that we almost had to wave our parental white flag in surrender after it kept collapsing.  But we persisted onward, and Hannah loved eating the candy decorating the house.

We spent time with those we love.

And before we knew it Advent was finished and Christmas eve was upon us.  Christmas Eve is always the traditional big celebration with the Griffey side of the family.  My brother, Bryan, and his family were here from Texas, and Hannah had so much fun with all her cousins.

Grandma and Granddad gave Hannah Peppa Pig's house.  We are big Peppa fans over here.

This boy keeps growing up.  Sigh.

Katie loved her fairy doll from Grandma and Granddad as well.

Speaking of growing up.  Ashley is now in the middle of her junior year in college.

Our family gave Caroline this new dress that she loved because it's "like Hannah" and wanted to wear it the rest of the day.  She, of course, grabbed Uncle Weston's hand to be in the picture too.

A Minnie Mouse for Caroline from Grandma and Granddad.

Oh the joy of helping your cousin open her present.  :)

After gifts and a yummy ham dinner, we quickly got ready for church.  Since we live so close to my parents, we ran home to get dressed and ready.  We had no exaggeration about 10 minutes to get everyone changed and back out the door.  I preface with this only to explain the way I look in these pictures.

And the traditional grandchildren picture is extra special this year.  Oh how this made me laugh.  And yes, this was the best one out of the bunch!  Poor Katie didn't want to be photographed.  And I promise Hannah had shoes.  She just refuses to wear them in the house.

After Mass, Hannah came to our dining room window to look for Santa.  He wasn't seen, but he did visit our house after everyone was asleep.

Two mermaids and one Nemo!

Reading new books on her new beanbag chair on Christmas morning.

We stuck around our house on Christmas morning and enjoyed our little family.  We cooked a brunch and stayed in our pajamas a lot of the day.  Then we headed over to our big celebration over at Weston's parents new home.  We had a delicious turkey dinner and exchanged gifts.

NuNu and Pops gave Hannah a Minnie scooter that she loves.  She started gliding across the floors instantly on it without any instruction.

After dinner and gifts, we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus with our dessert.

I know this was an overload of pictures.  So congratulations on making it to the end!  It was a wonderful and blessed Christmas with everyone we love.