Y'all, my sweet boy is one year old today.

Unbelieveable, right?

Honestly, words cannot express how extremely grateful and thankful I am to the good Lord for giving me this incredible little boy. Not only is he absurdly handsome (because he looks so much like his daddy!), but he is genuinely the happiest kid on the planet. Everywhere we go, people ask is he ALWAYS this happy?! because he constantly beams, smiles and laughs. He is relaxed in almost every environment and he is content with everything that life hands him. Honestly, it's inspiring.

David and I, when we found out we were pregnant with H,  prayed that God would bless us as good, strong parents. We wanted a healthy, happy child with a good head on his shoulders. And while I know we've got a long road of parenting ahead of us (discipline... academics... talking back... teenage hormones...driving... and oh my gosh, girls...!), I truly feel like we're on the right track so far. We just want what every parent wants for their children: to do our very best for this amazing kid and give him the amazing, love-filled, opportunity-filled life he deserves!

 

This beautiful baby boy is blossoming into a sweet toddler. Although, I don't allow the "toddler" word around our house... he's still my baby for at least a few more months! He's starting to feed himself, he took his first few steps last weekend, he's becoming more and more verbal every day and he constantly mimics everything David and I do. It's really incredible how much he's growing and it's crazy that he was just this little pea pod not so long ago. We are so proud of him.

Parenthood is incredible and I count my lucky stars every day that I get to be a mom to this baby.

With all of that sappy stuff said, happy, happy birthday to my sweet little one year old boy! Your mommy and daddy love you more than life, sweet H.

Hey friends! Words cannot express how excited I am to celebrate my little man and his first birthday this weekend! The past year has flown by in blur of amazing, priceless, love-filled moments. But I'll save the sappy stuff for tomorrow's post : ) Today is all about the party prepping!

David and I decided to theme the birthday party around one of H's favorite books- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. The kid cracks up every time we read it to him, so we thought it was only appropriate to surround him with something he loves. Plus he loves bright colors, so this theme is perfect!

I picked out the invitation on Etsy from this shop. She also created some other custom printables that I'll share with you after the party! She was great to work with and I love the product. How cute, right?!

Clearly, I took out all of the good stuff and added my lame black font to her pretty design, but you get the picture.

We're doing all kinds of fun alphabet-themed things for the kiddos but plan to keep the entire event light and fun for our family and close friends that we invited. I didn't want to put too much pressure on myself to DIY everything (ie. I cannot look up anything on Pinterest) but I do have a few small projects up my sleeve. I think it's a good balance and has left me stress-free and excited for the event.

Here are some sneak peeks at some of the party details!

I can't wait to share all of the details with y'all next week!

Have you planned any little kiddo birthday parties lately? What kind of themes did you use?!

It's Tuesday! Which means that it's time for some awesome projects.

I'm sooooo in love with this paint makeover in Sarah's master bedroom. She used one of my all-time favorite paint colors- Sherwin Williams Sea Salt.

 via Life on Virginia Street

Heidi transformed this basic side table into a chic graphite + gold piece for her daughter's dorm room.


via  Decor & More

How cute is this bright and cheery "you are my sunshine" themed nursery? The yellow ruffle curtain is precious.

 via Joy is the Best Makeup

Not only is this DIY herringbone chair makeover cool, it's especially awesome because Stephanie found the chair on the side of the road during her bachelorette party. Love that. Hardcore DIYer!
 

via Sandpaper & Glue

Hello, of course I love this DIY UGA burlap banner. It's perfect for football season which starts this weekend! The burlap, red, white and black reminds me of my burlap football sign.

 via Georgia & Daughter

I love seeing what you guys have up your sleeve. If you've got a recent room makeover or update, DIY project, recipe, kids project or anything else you think I'll love, send it my way! Email me at tenjuneblog@gmail.com (please put "Tuesdays at Ten June" in the subject line) or Instagram your photo for everyone to see with the hashtag #tuesdaysattenjune.

I kind of love when function and pretty things get together for the perfect combination, don't you? I've been majorly obsessing over the "dipped" painting technique for awhile. And I had a boring looking step stool that I wanted to pretty-fi... ta-da! A match made in heaven.

 A few weeks ago, I picked up this IKEA Bekvam step stool. We really needed a step stool around the house, since we've got a few high storage spots around our rental house that this shorty has a problem reaching. And I'm sure that the older HDawg gets, the more step-stooling he'll want to do. At $14.99 and solid wood, this IKEA piece was too hard to pass up.

I simply taped off the legs (I measured up about four inches from the ground) and then covered the rest of the stool with a trash bag. Fancy. That's how I roll.

Then I went into my jungle of a yard (David has cut it since this photo was taken, I promise) and spray painted my little heart out with some Rustoleum Glossy White spray paint.

I just love when simple and sweet projects come out well, don't you? Now that it's all jazzed up, this step stool will be a fun addition to any room in our house. I wanted a subtle white color, but how cute would a bold red or yellow be on the step stool's little feet?

What's even more fun is this Bekvam hack my girl FC did over at her blog, Freckles Chick. She posted her painted version of the step stool last week. Don't you love it?! I emailed her last week and told her we were working on the same project... girl loves herself some IKEA hacks and red wine like me, so we're more or less kindred spirits : ) Great minds think alike! Anyways, check out her version, it's rad!

Woah. Friends. This was some crazy week for me. I didn't get home from work until about 9 on Monday night and then HDawg had his ear tube surgery bright and early Tuesday morning. He rocked the surgery like a champ... and I did pretty well, too. Ha! I only cried twice ; ) He's recovering so well. In fact, he seems back to normal which is awesome. Such a tough kid. Even though it was hard to put him through the procedure, I know this will be great for him. Anyways, I ended up having to go in late Tuesday afternoon and work late Tuesday night... and all day Wednesday and Thursday. If you follow me on Instagram (@tenjuneblog), you know that my day yesterday was, well, interesting. Baby H's new thing is to get up between 4-5 AM (moms, how can I break him of this?!). So I crawl out of bed at 4:45 AM only to find that Tucker decided to turn my house into his personal restroom. Oy. Add to that the fact that I had a 2.5 hour commute to work yesterday morning.... And did I mention David was out of town? FUN, right! 

I'm telling y'all all of this not to complain but to apologize. You guys submitted some kick butt projects for this week's Tuesdays at Ten June feature and I'm so sad I didn't have a chance to share them! Needless to say, next week's feature will be fabulous. And if you haven't submitted anything yet, email (tenjuneblog@gmail.com- subject line "Tuesdays at Ten June") or Instagram (#tuesdaysattenjune) those projects over to me! The more, the merrier!

Alright, onto my Friday thoughts.

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1. Heroes. You may have heard this story on the news, but we've got somewhat of a local hero on our hands here in Atlanta. Earlier this week, a gunman entered a local Atlanta elementary school with a loaded AK-47. An administrative clerk in the front office decided to divert the gunman's attention from the students... the babies... to herself by beginning a conversation with him. She put all fear aside and simply spoke to the 20-year-old man on a personal level, asking him what was bothering him and why he was so upset. As he explained that he was mentally unstable and off his regular medication, she told the man that she had personally struggled with depression and that everyone goes through rough times. Meanwhile, police officers snuck the children out the back of the school. She convinced the gunman that even though he was in a rough place in life, he didn't need to harm anyone and should give himself up to the police. He did so, willingly, and no one was harmed.

It was an absolutely incredible story of bravery and grace. I sobbed my eyes out thinking about how scary the situation could have been had this woman not been so strong. Her entire conversation with the gunman was recorded on a 911 call, which you can hear here. Doesn't it just blow your mind that there are such amazing people out in the world? My daily prayer includes a request to the big man upstairs for strength and grace. This woman embodies both. I'm proud to say that I live in the same community as her. She is such a hero!

2. Dresser amazingness. While this is a complete change of pace from my first thought, I just had to share the amazing dresser makeover that Chris from Just A Girl recently did. I had the chance to spend a lot of time with Chris at the Haven conference and I can affirm that she's just as awesome and funny in person as she is on her blog. And, clearly, ridiculously talented. This piece looks like it could be sold in a high-end store! Restoration Hardware, what?

3. World Market sale. One of my fav inexpensive home decor retailers is having all kinds of great sales right now through Sunday. I'm actually willing myself not to go into the store this weekend because momma wants a few new things! Put. The. Wallet. Away. Right now, WM is having a living room furniture sale, a curtain sale and a wall art sale. Mhm, that sounds like fun! Okay, so maybe I need to at least stop by and see what they've got on their floor... right? : )

That's all for now. Hug those heroes in your life extra tight today! Have a great weekend.

Hola! Happy Monday, friends. We had a great weekend spent with friends and family, crafting for my sister's wedding and finally tackling (most) of the ridiculous pile of laundry that's been scaring me from my laundry room for the last couple of weeks. And I tackled a fun project that I'm excited to share... an easy DIY spruce up of a cloth storage bin with nothing but a little fabric.

At the Haven conference this year, I sat in on a great session about organizing by Jen and Chris. They were totally inspiring and basically motivated me so much with their great tips that I wanted to rush home and organize my little life away. One big tip that I took away from them, though, was to modify any ugly storage containers you have (paint! fabric! whatever!) in order to make them prettier to you. Storage and organization doesn't have to be ugly. In fact, it can be cuuuuute.

My first thought? These ugly guys.

I've actually spent a lot of time organizing and re-organizing this space in HDawg's nursery. If you remember, I repainted a bookshelf in green with chevron stripes and then set it up along this wall in the nursery. I quickly realized that the shelf didn't provide enough storage, so I switched the chevron shelf with the Expedit-ish white bookshelf that you see in this picture. We really like the white shelf in here, but H's toys are all jumbled in the boxes. The ugly brown boxes. Half of the time his toys were all over the living room... half of the time they were in his nursery... let's just say that this was a typical scene at our house.


And yes, we use my great-grandmother's vintage quilt as a brick fireplace safety buffer. Use what works!

With all that said, I figured it was high time I get to work sprucing up this space and making it organized once again.

I decided to cover one side of the cloth storage bin with a scrap of fabric. I bought this fabric last year when I was prepping H's nursery at our old house. I thought I might use it for a pillow, but never ended up needing the scrap. The colors work great in his nursery, though, so I'm glad to finally use it now!

I measured the side of my cloth bin (a standard bin I bought from Target a couple of years ago) and the measurement was 10.5" by 11". I added one inch to each measurement in order to give myself a half inch to hem around each side.


Four squares later, I was ready to hem.

Oh and as a side note, I wanted to add some fun trim like this, but David nixed it. "Ruffles in a boys room?" Mhm, babe. It's called style. Geez. ; )


I took the easy, no-sew route and simply used iron-on hem tape to hem each side of my fabric squares. Then I used this adhesive spray to spray the flat side of each canvas bin. I carefully smoothed out each piece of fabric onto the storage bin... and boom! You've got a fabric covered, prettified organizational tool.


I decided to label each bin with a chalkboard label that I found in the dollar aisle at Target. The chalkboard label gives me the ability to switch out the name for the contents of each box as he acquires more toys and we re-organize.


I love the way the striped fabric looks in the space!


And it makes me soooo happy that the contents of each bin are actually organized by category. Ahhh.


This is the perfect, easy makeover for those of you who are looking to make a cheap (mine was free!), quick fix in any room of your house. This is especially a great idea for us renters out there who can use temporary changes like this to make a big impact.

Now let's just see how long baby H helps me keep this space organized ; )


Have you added fabric to spruce up anything lately?!

PS. Prayers are appreciated... little H is getting tubes in his ears tomorrow morning! I know that he will be fine and that this is a wonderful answer to his constant ear problems... but this momma can't help but be a little nervous. My sweet little boy having surgery?! Yikes.

There are always a ton of random things floating around in this head of mine that I'd like to share with you guys. Whether you like it or not! I've decided to introduce a new "jot list" post where I can share some of that randomness in a quasi-organized fashion. Sound good to you?!

1. White jeans. We woke up to a 70 degree morning yesterday here in Atlanta. 70 degrees! That's basically heaven in August! And today is pretty cool, as well. So that gets me thinking about fashion for my faaaavorite season- the fall. I know you're not supposed to wear white after Labor Day and blah, blah, blah, but I think a soft "winter" white like these ecru jeans from J.Crew are a perfect transition from summer to fall. Top them off with a scrumptious cable-knit and boom. The perfect fall outfit. I can't wait! PS. J.Crew has 30% off their sale items in store and online! Get it, girrrls.

2. Baby butts. This is for all of those moms out there. Well, you non-moms can oogle at how cute my sweet HDawg's little boo-hiney is, of course : ) But for all of you mommas of tykes around HDawg's age, I have help when it comes to the pajama world. I have hard the hardest time finding footed and long sleeved/long pants pajamas for H that are in his size (he's already in 18 months for the most part!), cute and reasonably priced. Footed pajamas and long pants are so much easier (and warmer) at night than the loose shorts/t-shirt sets they typically sell for his size. And apparently I want him dressed in infant clothes forever. But, finally, Carters just released a ton of new designs for baby-toddler in-betweeners (boddlers?). We bought a few of these, these and these and love them! Just a heads up, mommas.

3. Baby gear. Speaking of bambinos, I shared a fun list of "must have" baby gear products for the 0-3 month stage last year. I see the post on Pinterest all the time. Is it something you guys loved? If so, I'd be more than happy to create a 6-12 month list and maybe even go back and do a 3-6 month round up if you guys are interested. Let me know what you think!

4. Tuesdays at Ten June. I haven't had a lot of submissions so far for next week's feature post, so I need you guys to send me some great stuff! Maybe this is your week to have your awesome DIY project, room makeover, recipe, kids DIY or other project featured front and center right here on Ten June. Send me an email (tenjuneblog@gmail.com- subject line "Tuesdays at Ten June") or tag your photos on Instagram (#tuesdaysattenjune). I know you guys are doing great stuff out there, so send 'em to me!

5. Books. I love 'em. But I haven't read any good books at all this summer. I recently asked my IG followers if they had any suggestions and boy, did they have answers! Thank you to all of you who answered with a list full of great books for me to catch up on. My Kindle wish list is officially full! If you want to find out some good reads, check out this post and the comments on Instagram (you can find me @tenjuneblog).

Alright, that's all I've got for today. The baby and I are headed off for a great day of lunch at work with David and some errands. I hope y'all have a great weekend!

Notice anything interesting about some of my latest Pinterest pins?

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Black accessories. I'm officially obsessed. Which is kind of weird coming from a girl who has very little black in her home. I've always felt that it was too... dramatic for my taste. But now, I'm turning the corner and I'm ready to embrace this dark hued color. Black is back.

I clearly inspired myself with my 2014 Ikea catalog product picks post last week because I decided to hit up the blue and yellow design mecca and grab up a few black accessories of my own.

 You like? I do!

I picked up some fun black + white striped place mats because Jenny inspired me to use them as drawer liners like she did in her kitchen. I also couldn't say no to the textured black + white lumbar pillow for only $7. I love this little woven guy. Can't decide where he should go... master bedroom or living room?!

Finally, I am ob-sessed with my new baskets with black accents. They're actually planters, but will absolutely pull double duty at my house as some toy storage in our living room.

I can't wait to add all of these sophisticated black touches to my house. Every room needs a touch of black, baby!

Happy Tuesday! It's time for another round up of fabulous DIY projects made by you. Ballers of the blog world.

 

First off, this wasn't a submission, but I had to share.

  

Hello, ridiculously adorable DIY raised dog feeding station. I think Tucker (and his momma!) may be in love. I need one of you, stat! Major shout-out to Yellow Brick Home, I lurrrve this project!

 

On to your awesome submissions.

 



I'm a big magazine fan. Are you? There's literally not much more that I love than sitting down with a pile of my favorite glossy mags and devouring their contents. Plus a margarita. On the rocks, extra salt. Heaven! 

If you follow me on Pinterest, you know that I oftentimes pin my favorite magazine spreads straight from my iPhone onto my Pinterest boards. I love having all of my favorite inspiration in one place. 

And this amazing laundry room from last month's edition of Real Simple Magazine is no exception. Do you know how much I love this laundry room? A lot. It's got organization, it's got style. Everything you would want in a laundry room! It makes me want to snatch up a laundry room for a bada$$ makeover ASAP! While I love our rental house's laundry room (it's got a ton of space and the awesome secret passageway), it's tough not to be able to redo it entirely when I'm inspired by such beautiful spaces like this! Anyone in Atlanta have a laundry room I can hijack to make over? You pay for the materials and buy me donuts and coffee and I'm your girl. Seriously, wouldn't that be fun?

Until then, maybe I should come up with a list of my favorite temporary laundry room fixes for us renters out there. Would y'all be interested in some inspiration like that?

Here are a couple other laundry rooms that have struck my eye lately out in the blog world.

Jenny Komenda's rad laundry room make over over at Little Green Notebook

my sweet friend Kelly's laundry room (that was recently featured in BH&G!) over at A View Along the Way

For more inspiring laundry rooms, check out my Laundy Room Pinterest board. Now someone get me a laundry room to paint to my little heart's desire, stat!

Psst! Have you entered your most favorite recent project for tomorrow's Tuesdays at Ten June feature? Shoot me an email (tenjuneblog@gmail.com) with "Tuesdays at Ten June" as the subject line or tag your photos on Instagram with #tuesdaysattenjune!

When it comes to my decor, I like it cute. I like it cheap. And I like it with Swedish meatballs. So it's no surprise that I really, really love Ikea. 

Have you gotten your 2014 Ikea catalog in the mail yet? Don't worry, I kissed the mailman when he delivered it. And then proceeded to spend waaay too much time ripping out pages and furiously circling my favorite products. And I'd be a bad blogger if I didn't share some of those favorite finds with you!

I mean, seriously with that green velvet couch? That is ridic. I am in love. And for under $1,000, I could easily find a fun spot in my house for that piece!

Ikea always kills it in the storage department, so I was automatically pulled towards that adorable black + neutral woven basket and the adorable patterned, colorful fabric box. Hello, HDawg toy storage!

Speaking of HDawg and other kiddos... that doll house furniture in the bottom left corner... I die. How cute is that? I know that "doll housing-ing" (did I just make that into a verb?!) is a big trend right now and it's hard to track down cute, contemporary miniature furniture. Well, not anymore. For $13 we can all have our own mini Expedit, Lack and striped rug. So precious.

You guys know I love the Ikea flat weave rugs (like the one in my dining room!) and their new Stockholm rug is no exception. I love that it comes in yellow, too. 

Ikea is really stepping things up a notch, don't you think? I love what I'm seeing! Now I just need to hop over to the Atlanta store and pick up some of these goodies in real life : )

Have you scoped out the 2014 catalog? What are your favorite finds?!