Tag Archives: baby

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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2013: A Year in Review

Happy Holidays! Whew! I apologize for my radio silence for the majority of this year. I promise 2014 will be back on track around here!

I think I had a pretty good excuse for my distraction. You see, in 2013, we had a little baby owlette! Being pregnant and having a newborn kept me pretty busy!

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baby girl hazel

Now, I know this isn’t meant to be a lifestyle blog, so I will keep my gripes about being preggo and gushing about our new little hazelnut to a minimum. I’m now running Lazy Owl Boutique (the business and the blog) as a full-time stay-at-home-mom of a 3-month old (that was a lot of hyphens).

Business aside, 2013 was a great year for Lazy Owl, and I hope it was a record year for your creative business as well. I’ve revisited my blog posts from the end of last year, Planning for Positivity and a Year in Reflection. The lessons from these articles can easily be re-applied to this year. First, let’s review what we’ve accomplished in 2013!

Positive notes for me and my creative venture in 2013:

  • Continued to generate new content for this blog over the first quarter of the year, gaining new followers and ever-increasing stats (even without updates, the hits keep coming! make a website yall!)
  • Maintained steady sales orders and revenue over on Etsy
  • Became a vendor at a new local shop in Houston for handcrafted goods, The Tinderbox
  • Sold for the first time at Pop Shop Houston, a handmade holiday market, and it was AMAZING!
  • Got a new camera, learned to (sort of) use it, and upped my listing photography skills
  • Continued to re-do my branding and imagery (I updated my banner, Facebook look, and business cards so far), and learned how to use Photoshop to do so on my own
  • Experimented with some new product line ideas, and figured out what did and did not work (like I am never going to be good at calligraphy haha)

That was the good stuff. Considering all that happened for me personally in 2013 (mostly baby stuff), I’m glad I was able to accomplish anything business-wise. I will admit that my sales did not increase nearly as much as I had hoped for this year, but the limiting factor in that equation was myself. I just did not have the time or energy to put as much effort into Lazy Owl as I had planned, and without constant effort, you’re not going to get the bigger payoff. However, I think that’s what’s so great about being a creative entrepreneur…you’re in charge of your destiny. The business is here when you need it, and if you need to step back for a while to focus on other things, you have the flexibility to do so.

I’m re-posting the same free printable I posted last year, but with a few new tweaks to really get you thinking about what you accomplished this year and ramp up your planning for the next. I added the “Personal” section, along with a capstone question – What did you learn this year about your business and yourself as an entrepreneur? If you had to sum up 2013 as one big lesson to lend toward your success next year, what would you say? For me, I’d say that in 2013 I learned that Lazy Owl can only be as successful as I’m willing to make it. I can only make so much money and generate a certain level of success by letting it (and myself) coast along. It really is important for me to do a little something to benefit my business everyday if I truly want to reach the goals I have in the near future.

Here’s the downloadable printable in all its glory. Click to download and dig deep into what you’ve accomplished this year. Even if you’re just starting out, it’s important to give yourself a pat on the back for what you’ve gotten done thus far!

free printable

SIDE NOTE! I just have to use this venue as my free plug for shopping Lazy Owl for the holidays. There’s still a few days left to order some fun handcrafted jewelry in time for Christmas! If you use code OWLBLOG you can get $5 off any order $15 or more!

wire-wrapped ring featuring raw pyrite nugget of fun, this year’s most popular Lazy Owl gift!

Up next, we’ll discuss planning for positivity and growth in 2014!

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