Progress!

I thought about saying that nothing much was new, but I guess we really are making some progress with things around the house. I don't know if this means that I'm "nesting" but all weekend I had the drive to do things around the house, including 5 loads of laundry, cleaning the house, grooming the dog, grocery shopping, and almost completely emptying the nursery of all things non-nursery. Oh, and I also completed the baby registries. Marc was able to finish the storage areas in the basement so that meant I could finally move things from the old 3rd bedroom into the basement! YAY! Then, yesterday I put the first coat of paint in the nursery (2 will be necessary, plus a little something 'extra' I'm doing to make it not so boring). Marc warned me that I was overdoing it by painting, but I assured him that I'd rather paint slowly than watch basketball all afternoon, so 2.5 hours later I had painted 3 walls (how's that for SLOW!!!) and he finished the last one for me. I am completely sore and dead tired today, so I imagine that will be the last painting I do for a long time around our house.

Last night we went through the basement decorating photos I've been collecting to try and decide what we want to do down there, and we actually found a few ideas we like. Most of our upstairs will be painted with warm neutrals, and while they are popular choices for many and look great throughout the house, I didn't want to be so boring and do our whole basement that way too. I know it creates flow, etc. but I am resisting:) Plus, we have only 1 window in the greatroom down there so I worry about it being too much of a cave. Yellows I seem to like in other people's houses, but I don't think I could ever pick the right shade, and I didn't like any of the pics I saw where people used yellows, it just seemed like an overbearing amount of artificially lighted space. Greens I always love, but we have 2 green rooms upstairs. Grays seems like a bad choice because we don't want to go back to concrete walls. I saw some pics online of people who had done v. light blues on the walls, and while I'm NOT a blue kind of person, I kind of liked the feel. Here's an example:

We already have white doors in the upstairs, so we're doing the same down there (which require logs of magic erasers to keep clean I have found), and Marc and I both wish we had white trim upstairs, so we want to do that downstairs. Light carpeting and white ceilings we both love, so that will be the same too. My only worry about light blue in a basement is that it will either feel too cold or give you an underwater feeling. Well, of course, and that it will look dirty once kids start playing down there, but as I mentioned, I pretty much stock up on magic erasers anyways, haha!. My idea to combat that is to furnish with really warm/bright tones, like reds, browns, golds, and oranges (I would love a big deep red couch!). And lots of blankets/comfy pillows.

Now accepting opinions on basement decorating! :) Alauna....

For the other rooms I think we're going to stick with more neutrals and just try to tie each room to the others, mainly due to the way it is laid out, like the fact that the bedroom is a walkthrough and the laundry room has no door and is adjacent to the main living area. The bathroom is just BIG, don't know what to do with it other than make it as spa-like as we can afford. Bathrooms are so expensive! Who knows when we'll actually finish it.

More pictures to come as the nursery decorating wraps up - maybe mid April? I need to order a few things for the walls. Here is a little teaser, though: