Chalkboard Murphy Bed

Have you ever wished you had more space? Well, we have a tiny house and so I'm constantly wishing we had more space. But we love the house and I'm slowly figuring out ways to make the space we have work for us! 

Now that we have been in the house for 6 months and had a few visitors and are planning to have family over during the Holidays I was really motivated to figure out how to make our guest room function as a guest room and a craft room.
This is what it looked like before, just a twin bed. So it didn't do so well when we had guests. Plus these pictures make it look good, it was NOT this good. There were little piles all over the place and you could never see the bed. Basically, it desperately needed an update to make it functional!

 What we ended up doing is 1. moving most of my art stuff out to the studio. All that is left is just my craft paint and some of my nicer art supplies. 2. we took the twin bed out and made a murphy bed! That way when we didn't have guests I could use the floor space!  The twin bed we had was actually two mattresses (no box spring) so we took out the frame and built the box for the murphy bed big enough to fit both mattresses side by side. I scored a nice mattress topper for super cheap and got some sheets to fit and TA DA!! A guest room that our guests can actually use!

Reed is an amazing husband. He thought it was crazy and didn't want to do it, but he loves me and trusted that I knew what I was doing. So we loaded up and built the murphy bed one night after work. Yep he stayed up past mid-night with me getting it all together :) Now he likes it and doesn't think I'm quite so crazy.

Now we are ready for family to visit, and for when we don't have guests too :)  I'm gonna write up a post later about how we made the entire bed and how you can do it too! It was so easy, once we planned it out and got the materials it took just a few hours to get it totally put together. And now I have this rad chalkboard to keep track of projects, or just write pretty notes on!

I'm one happy girl! 

Natural Cotton & Burlap Christmas Tree

Decembers Giveaway is up and going until the 14th!! Go enter to win everything you need to set up your mantel for Christmas!! GIVEAWAY >>>>>>>

I've said this about a thousand times this season but this is the first year Reed and I really get to do Christmas. And what I mean by that is last year we were in school, had an itty bitty house, and went out of the country for 2 weeks for Christmas with his family. So this year I have the time and a little more space to actually decorate! But with it being our first year we didn't have a lot to work with. 

I would love to take credit for this idea but I can't. I have a friend who is an interior designer with Erin Galloway Interiors and she had her Christmas show at the beginning of November and this is how she decorated one of her trees. The natural cotton was STUNNING! She did it a little different than I did, but it was originally her idea so all credit goes to her!

First of all this awesome tree is pre-lit and was originally $200 from Lowe's, buttttttt my hubs worked at Lowe's last year and got it for $40 after Christmas!! I know it isn't super unique but for now it will have to do :) And we have our precious baby to be unique enough for the tree too. While we were putting up the tree Tepe decided to play around in the garland from the Dollar Store. She even put one of her toys (a stick from outside, we buy her toys but she prefers natural) on the bottom limbs of the tree. Ooo this baby girl melts my heart!

To spruce up this pre-lit stiff tree I got out the burlap bunting I made last year. (Last year we didn't have a tree and didn't have room to get one so I made my own out of burlap. Check it out here) I'm glad I saved it because I didn't have any other garland type thing to add! But I just wrapped the tree with it making sure it didn't look perfect ;)
Then I took this bundle (is that what you call it?) of cotton and got Reed to cut off each little bloom. Erin did it differently and actually took some of the entire twigs with the blooms on them and stuck them in to the tree. That made her tree have loads more dimension and I kinda wish I did it that way. But hey, live and learn!

I just love how the tree turned out! I was planning to make some other ornaments and try and buy a few but I love the way the cotton looks like ornaments and seems to glow with the lights. I think I may just leave it all natural this year and pick up some ornaments after the holidays :)

So there is our Christmas tree that cost $40 total! I just can't get over it, some one come visit so we can sit by my tree and sip hot coco!!

Don't forget to go enter the giveaway that Rachel and I are holding! Enter before the 14th and you can win loads of new Christmas decorations!!  GIVEAWAY