SUYL- Kids Rooms

I am participating in Show Us Your Life on Kelly's Korner and today is featuring kids rooms. 

This is Graham's room and it is actually a picture of what it looked like in Texas. It looks pretty much the same here but for some reason it looked better in Texas. Probably because I haven't bothered to paint here and don't feel like it :) 

I had a hard time finding boy bedding that I liked and after a long search we went to High Fashion in Houston and found some fabric and we went from there. My mom helped me make the curtains and bed skirt and the accent pillows. Then my mom painted these elephants to go with the decor. 

I made the lamps by adding ribbon to a simple Ikea lamp shade and I found the baskets from Babies R Us. The rug is from Pottery Barn Kids. 

The letter is from Etsy from Whimsical Rooms...you can find the link from this post I did earlier. And we found the bed skirt, changing pad cover from Babies R Us. I added drawer knobs I found at Hobby Lobby to an Ikea dresser.

Here is Peyton's room here in Saudi. I redid her room when we moved here and it is one of my favorite rooms in the house. The bedding, rug, wall art, curtains and decals are all from Pottery Barn Kids.

The art above her dresser is an original painting that my mom did for her. Peyton loves it and tells pretty much everyone who comes into her room that her G painted it for her.

As you can tell...her room is huge! It has a reading corner, room for toys and then her play table and easel. You could easily put two kids in here! All of her furniture (besides the bookcase that has her toys on it) are from Ikea and the other bookcase is from Target. The lamps are from Target...the pink one is from Ikea. I love Ikea for kids furniture because if they color on it, put stickers on it or ruin it, you are not out a whole bunch of money and well...kids don't take all that great of care of things!


There are the kids rooms! It is always fun to decorate their rooms because you can have so much fun with different colors and patterns!

SUYL- Living Rooms

I am participating in Kelly Korner's Show Us Your Life series on our houses...and this week it is our living rooms!


In March I did a whole house tour of our new house in Saudi (well by then we had been here 10 months but it was when I finally got around to it).


But specifically here is the living room....

I wanted to show our old house in Texas and what our living room there looked like....

And then onto our company/cookie cutter house in Saudi...we have tried hard to make it our own and more cozy....seeing these pictures really makes me want to paint but I don't want to repaint it when we leave and the ceilings are huge!

We have a long rectangular room that runs along the middle of the house seperating the bedrooms from the kitchen. The room has two functions...main living room and dining room (and we don't have an eat in kitchen so it is our only eating area). Here is the main living room.

 In the corner is an antique wooden door with lots of intricate carvings that is from Afghanistan. You can see more pictures of it here.

 You can see the dining room in the background.

My desk that I got from Altar'd Custom Hand Painted and Refinished furniture outside the Houston area. I love it! We bought it when we knew we were pregnant with Graham and needed to turn the office into a nursery and it fit in our kitchen bay window. Also...the dresser that the TV is sitting on is from her as well. I love having a dresser for a TV stand because there is so much storage and useful drawers.

In our new house we have a secondary living area which we LOVE. I am so thankful for this space. It is split between a more casual sitting area and a playroom. 

Thats our living room and playroom/living room! Hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to visiting lots of other spaces!

Saudi House Tour

When we first moved here in May I did a post of what our new house looks like here. I had the intention of putting up "after" pictures once we got settle and kept forgetting to do it. So, finally I made sure the house was clean and took pictures.


So...lets get started! 

Here is our floor plan to help visualize where everything is

I don't have an before picture of what the entry looked like but essentially it was nothing. Here is what our entry looks like now....

Currently I have our Spring branches in with Easter eggs hanging. Once Easter is over I will keep the Cherry Blososm branches and just take off the eggs. In the fall I have some nice orange, brown and red branches. On the wall is an etching that we bought at a Bazzar here of a Bedouin lady on a camel. We finally got it framed and up on the wall. The bookcase serves as a place to store everything...I have a birthday present on there that I need to give to someone, one basket is the dogs leash and ball and the other is where I store dry cleaning. Since it is not too big of a basket, it helps make sure that it doesn't pile up. 

Just off the entry is a large, rectangular living and dining room.

Before

After

The room is divided into three purposes...the more formal living room which is above. We typically watch non cartoons in here and the occasional movie with the kids. Then there is the dining area which is below. We eat all our meals here and it has worked out well. I made sure to buy lots of different kinds of fun kid colored plastic place mats so we keep the table nice and we bought slipcovers for the leather chairs before we came which are awesome, just take them off and wash them.

My desk and laptop sit between the two areas. Not the most ideal place for an office area but it works and I can work on the blog while watching kids play in the playroom next to this room.

Off the living/dining room is the playroom and more relaxed living area. This is the room that we love having as we did not have this space in Texas. It has been awesome to have a play area.

Before- isn't it depressing....there was NOTHING in here for the first four months we were here!

After

Off of the playroom/living room is the kitchen. 

Before

 After

You can't do much with a kitchen in company housing so other than adding some accessories, a rug and a blind we tried to update it and make it not so bland. But if this was my house we would totally be knocking down cabinets to open it up to the playroom and updating counters and cabinets and floors and appliances!  But it works for us as is!

On the opposite side of the house is all the bedrooms (3) and the bathrooms (2). At the one end of the hall is the master bedroom and bathroom. 

Before

After

Currently what is in our master is what we had in Texas which I loved but our house in Texas was much brighter, had beautiful wood floors and it felt bright and airy and just what I wanted. Here it just seems dull. So, I have been wanting to update it with some bright colors, add some reds and I am hoping to buy this duvet from Pottery Barn. 

John has kind of agreed to it but hasn't given me the full go ahead to order so I am waiting on that. I am hoping with that, a textured headboard in either a wood or even a Seagrass/basket material would add some dimension and something different to a pretty bland room.

Just down from our room is the second bathroom which is the kids bathroom and guest bathroom in one.

Before

After

Also on this side of the house and down the hall are the kids two rooms. I completly redid Peyton's when we moved here and I love it. I probably like it more than she does. I bought everything from Pottery Barn Kids and most of the furntiture is from Ikea and the lamps are a combination from Ikea or Target.

Before

After

And finally here is Graham's room which is essentially the same as it was in Texas minus the paint color. I am still so happy that my mom helped me with the curtains and bedding. We did have a cute bed skirt which you can see here but when we lowered the crib it didn't work. I am going to work on it and get it to fit on his big boy bed when he moves into that...hopefully not anytime soon.

Before

After

After picture to come....whenever I have a spare moment it means he is asleep and I am not about to disturb him. But it looks almost identical to his room in Texas.....

That is it! Hope you enjoyed seeing where we live here in the desert!