Hi, I’m Erin from 3 Meadow Lake Cottage!

I’m a stay-at-home mom of 2-year-old triplets (yes, I said triplets!), living in the Pacific Northwest. When I’m not changing diapers and wrangling toddlers, I spend my time thriftily (is that a word!?) transforming our blah blah builder’s grade house into a home with cottage charm with little nods to my love of the beach. 

Originally I started our blog to document our progress as we worked to makeover our home, one room at a time. But seeing one room through to completion without getting side tracked in other rooms proved to be much harder than it sounds!

The first room we tackled was our master bedroom. It seems like the master bedroom is always the last room to get any decorating love, yet we spend so much time in there! So I thought I’d make it a priority and start my whole-house makeover there.

Transforming our room from this…

to this…

took us nearly a year to complete.

Why so long, you ask?
When you have a family of 5 living on one income, there’s not much room left in the budget for decor…
so we scrimped and saved to buy some of the items,
we built some of the furniture ourselves,
and we gave new life to some old items too.
All of that takes a lot of time and effort to complete,
especially when you are juggling three babies!

We started by painting the room Benjamin Moore’s Stratton Blue.

After saving up and buying all new bedding from Pottery Barn,
we built our own farmhouse bed and nightstands using plans from Ana White.
Read about the bed HERE and the nightstands HERE.

Up next was a new dresser to replace this old beat up hunk of junk…

We couldn’t afford to buy a new one, so I found a real beauty on Craigslist for $20.

I worked for months stripping and sanding the horrendous paint out of every tiny little nook and cranny of that thing.

Never again will I attempt to strip something so detailed!!!
But it ended up turning out really great
You can read all about it HERE.

Once we had all of the main elements in the room, then we just had to fill in all of the holes.

Some things were made or repurposed,

{You are my Sunshine art,  painted  frames paired with old art}

{Oars hanging above bed personalized with our wedding date,
read more about the oars HERE}

 {Shells hung on the walls}

while other items had to be purchased over time.

 {baskets from Pier 1}

 {drapes from Bed, Bath and Beyond, rod made out of long dowel, finials, and brackets from Lowe’s – read about it HERE}

 {lamp shades from Ballard Designs, we already had the lamp bases, conch shell planter from Safeway}

And that, my friends, is why it took us a whole year to finish!

I was hoping to tackle a much smaller room next {like a bathroom},
but somehow got lured into the Family Room…

So be sure to check out 3 Meadow Lake Cottage to follow our progress!!!

Thanks for inviting me to guest post, Cassity!!