Category Archives: Work/Life Balance

Work/Life Balance – A Tour of Hazel’s Nursery

A Guide(1)So, I’ve made it no secret that last September, I added “mama” to my resume. Today I’m going to take a break from churning out my usual business-y fare and give you a little peek into the nursery we created for our little one, Hazel. I hope you enjoy!

Hazel is 8 months old now, and it’s slightly humorous to look back on my preggo days and how frantic I was about getting her room ready. I really wanted everything to look perfect and fit the color scheme and yada yada. I had the diaper station ready to go, the sheets washed…everything in its place. Little did I realize that Hazel wouldn’t be sleeping, or barely even hanging out, in this room until she was like 6 months old. But oh well. You have to keep the crazy pregnant lady busy doing something, am I right?mint pink and gold nursery

I wasn’t really feeling having a set “theme” for her room, so I just went with a cohesive color scheme of mint and pint, with touches of gold. I didn’t want anything to blatantly girly, so we went with mint. Obviously there’s lots of white too.

mint, gold, and pink nursery

shelf wall close up

We’ve got a nice sturdy bookshelf with baskets full of toys. I had some little 4×4 inch canvases hanging around and painted them in ombre shades of pink, then glued some cute little doilies to them. The white wooden rocking horse was made long ago by my grandfather, who passed away when I was just a kid. My husband had the great idea to let Hazel paint it when she’s a little older, so for now it chills on a little wall shelf we got from Target. I re-covered an ikea lampshade in some cute fabric, and most of the other objects I found thrifting. I purposely went out and tried to find some nice gold-colored vintage pieces to add some character to the space.

I got the lovely little golden mirror from the Etsy shop Secret Window Mirrors. Her white crib is from PBK’s Larkin collection. I absolutely adore her owl & hot air balloon mobile from Drops of Color, also found on Etsy.

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Here’s a close up of the collage/art wall above her crib. I searched for items that would match the color scheme and be appropriate for our baby girl and our family. I am absolutely Disney-obsessed, so I knew I had to have some sort of Disney shout-out included! I made the yarn-wrapped H initial myself and added some cute little flowers made of canvas ribbon, lace, and vintage buttons. So fun!

I’ve since had to take down the mobile (for now) because it turns out mobiles keep babies awake, instead of sleeping peacefully! Haha. I covered two corkboards from Ikea with coordinating fabric, and the rest of the artwork I ordered from Etsy.

Carnival swings photo – SSC Photography
Life is Beautiful print & Do You Suppose She’s a Wildflower print – The Wheatfield (all time fave shop!)
Typewritter photo – CarolineMint
Cinderella’s castle photo – PhotoReverie

mint gold pink nursery

view of the nursery from the doorway

I was so obsessed with everything matching that I made my poor husband replace the previously dark wooden ceiling fan with an all white one. Here you can also see the gold curtains that I searched forever to find (we settled on gold blackout shades from Overstock.com), and our Larkin PBK diaper changing station and dresser. This corner also now houses our tan Lazy boy recliner (which I love). Nursing took so long the first few months that we kept it downstairs in the living room…so I could watch TV while nursing of course.
 hazels bathroom

Here’s Hazel’s bathroom. It used to be painted beige, but I convinced my husband to paint it white. Which I think was sort of a mistake, since all the cabinets and counter tops in here are cream. So now it’s sort of like mismatched white/cream overload. But oh well…we’ve made it work.

I found the awesome pink & mint frames from Homegoods (love that store, who doesn’t?). The prints are also from Etsy shop CarolineMint. The embroidered bear art used to hang in my nursery when I was a petite bebe, and my mom handed it down to me. It happened to already match our mint scheme, so I just painted the frame gold and voila!

The masterpiece of the bathroom is my DIY heart made of buttons. This was fun and easy to make, just a question of finding lots of pink buttons, and Hazel LOVES it. Anytime she’s having a cranky moment I can just bring her up to it and she loves poking and pointing at all the tiny buttons. I call that a handmade success.

DIY nursery ideas

DIY heart button art

Thanks for joining me on a little tour of Hazel’s mint & pink nursery! Now back to our regularly scheduled content 🙂

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Introducing Work/Life Balance – Attempting to Stay Sane

work life balance as a creative business ownerHi guys. It’s me here today! After I converted this blog over to WordPress from Blogger back in 2012, I gave it a much more refined and defined feel and revamped it as a place where other creative entrepreneurs could access business resources, download free printables, and learn about relevant topics to improve their business skills.

I’ve really enjoyed growing this site, writing about all these fun business topics, and learning as I go along. The journey has been great thus far! But I’ve gone through a lot of changes in my own journey as a creative entrepreneur and in my personal life as well.  I’ve gone from working as a full-time CPA to a work/stay-at-home mom of an 8-month-old baby girl.

I’ve never really enjoyed writing too much about my personal life or myself, it just doesn’t come very naturally to me, but it’s been challenging and a bit confusing for me to have this website, a pretty public forum, and NOT share any pieces of my life other than only the tiny corner of the me that is Lazy Owl Boutique. Thus, I’ve decided to add a new periodic series of posts, which for now I’m calling Work/Life Balance, that will serve as a more personal outlet for me.

If you’re like me, you probably follow a handful of really awesome lifestyle blogs, and if you have kids, maybe even some mom blogs too. I know you don’t come to our site here to learn about makeup, cupcake baking, or parenting,… you come for the business resources and tips (I hope)! My goal is not to turn this into a lifestyle blog or spend days chronicling my baby girl’s motor skill development. However, I do think (and hope) that it’ll be refreshing and interesting to add a personal touch to my site, and that you can relate to the challenges of running an at-home office and business alongside a household and a family. Even if you aren’t a parent or working from home, I think we can all relate to the constant hustle and juggling of trying to make it as a creative entrepreneur.

lazy owl boutique

My hope is that this new article series will reconcile my innate need to include a more personal side to this site (which before everything else, is really simply a blog!) with the helpful educational tidbits you’ve already come to expect from Lazy Owl. A lot of my favorite blogs in the handmade business realm are written by ladies that do a wonderful job of giving their readers a peek into their home/personal lives as well. I think this is what makes them relatable, interesting, and successful. I find that I trust their business advice and experience more since I feel like I know them a bit better as a well-rounded person, and not just an entrepreneur or a faceless blogger.

I hope you agree, and I’m really looking forward to this new venture! If you find the new article series boring or pointless, I also don’t mind if you skip them and just read all the free business goodies 🙂

Thanks for joining me here!

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