// The Flynn Nest: Our Bedroom

Whoa! Happy freakin' 2016! How did that happen?! I took some time away from the blog to enjoy the holiday with the family. And of course by enjoy I mean stress about any and everything. (Am I right or am I right?!) It wasn't all stress though - Honestly, it was quite nice to take it easy. It's been interesting navigating our first big holiday season with Mike as a nurse. He worked every single major holiday haha We're trying to adjust! Anyway, I'm starting off 2016 by sharing our bedroom tour! The crazy 75 degree weather after Christmas really triggered my Spring Cleaning Fever and I'm looking to finish so many projects this year!

Our bedroom has become my favorite room in the house. With all of the hustle and bustle of work, school, and the holidays, it's been really difficult to find time to just be with Mike. This time of year just asks so much of us, so we have to squeeze in "us" time wherever we can. On top of the stress season, Mike works nights so he's gone at least half of the week (and he sleeps during the day when Linden and I are home.) Our bedroom is the only space in our house that's just for us. We finally got around to tidying it up and finish up this phase of our home. Now even when we're sleeping alone, it's a little more relaxing and "sweet". It's been a bit of an organizational nightmare though, I won't lie.

Despite being the "master" bedroom in our house, our room is really tiny. We have a queen size bed, a thin tv table, and small bedside "tables" on either side of our headboard. We don't have room for a lot of stuff. In our small room we have an equally small closet. Mike and I each have quite the wardrobe, and seriously nothing fits. Since we both needed somewhere to store extras like underthings and what not, we opted to pick up two straw trunks at Michaels to serve the purpose. It's not the perfect solution, but it actually works quite nicely for our space. We've lived here for 3 years now (whoa!) but we've yet to put the closet door up in our room. Sad, no? Right now we're doing it college-style with the same sheer panels over our closet as our window. I'll get around to changing those one day! There are a few baskets and boxes scattered around the room that hold our jewelry or loose change. Mike likes to set up his bedside table to write music, while I use my sidetable to hold my inhaler (ha!) and the baby monitor. We're exciting people, I'm telling ya!

I feel like our spaces say a lot about us as individuals, but also as a couple. I think our unique take on things really meshes well together. Obviously I tend to have more of a hand in the decorating when it comes down to the knick knacks here and there, but we did this room together after Christmas and I'm so glad we tackled it as a team. Our room is playful enough to not make me feel old and stuffy, but grown up enough that I don't feel out of my element. I'd like to play with the layout of the closet a bit more, just to see what else I can fit in there haha! After going through all of my clothes, I have quiiiiite the Kaelah's Closet stock! Goal: Organize sale by the end of January!

Inspired to organize your own space? Start your new year off right! Michaels has tons of products and storage supplies that you can use to decorate your space. They just launched a new line called Cre8ted Spaces (there are like 300+ items in 4 different colors), but I haven't had a chance to pick up any yet! The white range would look awesome in Toby's room, so we're tackling that soon! I'm so glad we finally hunkered down and tackled our bedroom. I'm so so happy with the space and it just feels so cozy. It's definitely inspired me to tackle the rest of our house, too. If you want to check out the other overhauls by the Michaels Makers, check out the Glue String blog!

xo KB

An InLinkz Link-up

// A Cozy Bed

There are few things I enjoy more than freshly laundered bedding. Especially white bedding! It always makes me feel like I'm in a hotel, ya know?

Mike and I agree on a lot of things, but one thing we don't agree on is the type of bed frame we want. Over the past several years we've had the conversation more times than I care to remember, and it never ends agreement. I love all things white and feminine. He loves low, platform beds and minimalistic lines. We compromised (if you can call it that) in East Nashville with some rustic palettes as the bed frame, just to keep our mattress and box spring off of the floor. Even still, we had yet to agree on a headboard. We didn't have one in East Nashville because our bedroom was mostly windows so we didn't want to block the light, but now that we have a full wall behind our bed we knew it was time to do something. We've tossed around the idea of doing our own tufted headboard, or a simple wooden one. We had a lot of weather scrap lumber laying around so we decided to whip something up just for the time being.

Mike built this simple rustic headboard in under 30 minutes earlier this week. It's such an easy project honestly. I wasn't planning on loving it as much as I do, but after an immense amount of support via Instagram I couldn't not love it, ya know? A few people have requested a tutorial on how to build your own, and luckily we have a lot of scrap wood left. Would that be something y'all would be into? If so, I'm sure we could make it happen! I feel like a lot of our woodworking DIYs are sort of hit or miss. Sometimes they can be too involved for anyone to want to tackle, but the great thing about this is all you need is a drill and a saw. Easy peasy! 

Do you have a traditional bed frame and headboard? Or have you DIY'd something yourself?! Toby will be growing out of his bed before too long so I'm constantly on the hunt for bigger and better ideas. Who knows how long our little headboard will last either. The great thing is it cost us exactly ZILCH so I'm not too worried about it haha! I want to do something super fun for Toby though... Hmm!

Cottage Tour : Bedroom etc.

For the final installation of our cottage tour, I'm combining our bedroom with our bathroom and Toby's room, too. I'm keeping them pretty short as we didn't get a chance to photograph everything but that's probably for the best...

Up first: Toby's room. It's a "shark" theme (very loosely). He liked the idea of the stuffed sharks and the Ryan Berkeley artwork, so that worked out nicely. He loves stuffed animals and he looooves books. He has loads of each. It's not really the perfect room, but considering he came to live with us when that room was piled to the ceiling with Honeybean inventory, we think we've done a pretty good job at turning it into his own little space. While you can't see it in the photos, he has ample shelving in his room. There's a huge bookshelf parrallel to his bed which houses all of his toys and Power Ranger swords. He's very particular about where those items go, too. Next to that is a vertical paper tower light, then his dresser and another small table. Across from that is a short bookcase under his light switch, then the wall turns and it goes to his double door closet.

My parents bought his bed + dresser at Walmart when he first came to live with us and the bed has storage underneath so it's perfect. The floor is painted concrete so we just put down a huge rug we had in our loft. The room was an addition to our house so it's about 4 inches lower than the rest of the place. The windows are such awkward sizes so we don't have curtains on them, but the blinds do their job. (Remind me to get better pictures... these are so horrible and so incomplete haha)

Now here's our bedroom. I've shared some Instagrams of it in the past. Nothing special. We each have a side of the room that we kind of "decorated" (I use that term loosely). As I've said a million and seven times, Mike is really laid back about the decor so we agreed on white + grey bedding, then he let me have all of my floofy pink pillows. He has a lot of Ron Swanson art and guitars on his side. He did all of the arranging on the wall perpendicular to our bed, too. Our Nashville prints are all from Anderson Design Group here in town. You can see a third Nashville print in Toby's room, and then our final (and favorite!) is sitting framed in the living room... just not hung yet. Doesn't make much sense, I know. But we want to make sure we find the perfect home for it. (All but the one in Toby's room is re: the Nashville flood in 2010. It's a great reminder to us on how far we've come since losing everything. They'll always be really special to me. The one on the left is the 1 year anniversary print, and the one on the right is 1 in a series of 3. Sadly I only own 2 of them!)

The awesome moose head up top is from White Faux Taxidermy! It's one of our very favorite things in the entire house. I wish I would've caught a glimpse at this one earlier because that would so be on our wall! Two thumbs way up on that! All of the other artwork in our room is from various Etsy shops and Fab.com. I'll list all of those below! Our bed sits on 4 flat wooden pallets that we put down as a foundation. Mike loves lowwww platform beds and I most definitely do not, so this was our compromise haha A lot of people ask how we secured them and to answer that: we didn't. We just laid them down and plopped our mattress + boxspring on top! $5 project, boom! 

You also can't tell but on either side of the dresser/Nashville prints there is a closet. Both of the closets in the bedroom are Mike's so he has ample storage space, too. I promise I don't hog all of the closets in the house! Just the one in my office!

Then finally, a couple peeks at the bathroom. Our home is pretty small (1011 sq ft) for the three of us, and it only has one bathroom. We know it's not that small in comparison to some places but we definitely make it work for us. In our loft Mike kind of let me get away with a "cat" theme but this one is minimally girly I guess. At least when compared to the other one! I know it's time for me to part with this Cynthia Rowley shower curtain but I just can't! I've been scouring the internet for a replacement forever but with no luck :( I'm going to hold on for dear life haha. Also - note my dried carnations in the milk glass. Whoops!

TOBY'S BEDROOM:
Bed + Dresser : Walmart
Nashville print : Anderson Design Group
Rug : Walmart
Shark illustrations : Ryan Berkeley
Various thrifted tables + accents

OUR BEDROOM:
Pallets : dude at our storage unit
Side tables : repurposed from thrifted pieces + sewing table
Nashville prints : Anderson Design Group
Moose head : White Faux Taxidermy
Artwork : Nan Lawson, Eine Der Guten, etc
Lights : Target
Throw Pillows : TJ Maxx

BATHROOM:
Shelves : Fred's clearance section (years ago)
Fake plant : Ikea
Cat figurines : yard sale
Cat print : Fab.com (forget the artist!)
2 smaller illustrations : Scathingly Brilliant / Flapper Doodle
FLYNN letters : Hobby Lobby
Shower curtain : Cynthia Rowley

We decided to skip the kitchen and hallway (if you can call a tiny little square a hallway) because they're awkward spaces. Our kitchen is laid out really poorly and we've never really done much to fix that. We have a stand alone pantry that just sticks out like a sore thumb, and it has the doors to our little laundry room, too. It's just a super weird layout and we don't even have a dine in kitchen. Looking forward to when a dining room table is possible but until then, we're making the most of our little home here on the East side. Thanks for taking a look!

Cottage Tour : Office/Studio

I feel like I should pre-face my office tour with a big ol' disclaimer: It won't look like this (hopefully!) for much longer. One of the first projects I plan to tackle post-honeymoon is rearranging + organizing my office. Right now there are just too many shoes and not enough area to cut fabric and store it. Since Toby came into the picture in February I've realized how impractical 6" platform shoes are. I plan on keeping around a handful of pairs, because the tag line of this blog does include "ugly shoes" afterall haha Mike and I are planning on expanding our online offerings via Etsy and a more legitimate e-commerce site later this Autumn so work and storage space is a must. I'll miss being surrounded by those shoes though!

I also am not sharing to many photos of my closet. It's huge (15"+ wide) but it's still a mess from getting rid of nearly 70 items last week. It also has shoe storage at the bottom of it, too. I'm really proud I was able to part with that much, so I'm trying to keep the trend going. The purses you'll see up top? Totally haphazardly thrown... and it's kind of embarrassing. I'll be cutting those down majorly and getting rid of some via Kaelah's Closet and the rest will be donated or given to friends. I see a lot of things changing for me over the next week or two, but I'm saving that for another blog post!

Anyway! Here's where I spend 8-15 hours every. single. day haha!

Desk + sidecart : Ikea
Chair : Reupholstered yard sale find
Tall cubbies + shelving : Lowes / Target / Walmart
White bookshelves : Walmart
Pink dresser : Restored thrift store find
Mugshot print : Larken on Etsy (via Renegade '11)
Dog breed illustrations : Tiny Confessions on Etsy (via Fab)
Dream Big caravan watercolor : Ella Masters
Gertrude / Taxidermy : yard sale + some paint + a wig

I didn't think about doing a resource list from our living room, but most of it was made/thrifted anyway. If you have any questions about the source of anything else (in this room or otherwise), feel free to ask below :) You can also see past home tours HERE! Happy Wednesday!