[New House] Mason's Room Decor with Minted.

Disclosure: a couple of products in this post were sponsored by Minted. However, all options are 100% my own.

As I mentioned in the post yesterday, most of the things in Mason's room just transitioned from his old room in our old house and our apartment, but I did get a few new functional items as well as decor items to spruce up his room a bit. Today I wanted to share a few of the decor items that I didn't really have a chance to fully explain yesterday.

The folks at Minted were gracious enough to let me choose a few products of theirs for Mason's new room and I was super excited to add a few new pieces to what we already had. Of course their site is overflowing with amazing things (like seriously, I wanted them ALL), but when I came upon these two items, I knew they had to be a part of Mason's room - the art shelf and the alphabet print.

Minted calls this shelf "The Little Artist Shelf" and you can easily see why - you get to display your artwork for all to see! For those of you who have followed my blog or my Instagram for a while know that I am BIG on sharing kid's art work. In fact, we had an art gallery wall in our living room for the longest time (that I actually moved to Mason's room in our new house - on the opposite wall). I was super excited when I found this shelf because not only can I display Mason's artwork on it, but I can also showcase some professional artwork and quotes that I love above on the ledge. I love how sturdy the shelf is, Seth loved how easy it was to install, and I love how it has tons of hooks for me to be able to display bigger or smaller artwork (or to switch out with printed pictures if I choose to change things up a bit). The items I wanted to hang now happened to be bigger, so I just skipped a few hooks and left them empty, but as you can tell, you could totally hang a lot of art/pictures from this shelf.

The Little Artist Shelf comes in four different colors to choose from - white, natural, soft gray, and whitewash. I chose soft gray for Mason's room. It also comes in three different sizes to choose from - two feet, three feet, and four feet. I chose the three foot shelf for Mason's room. How did I come to this decision? Randomly choosing. Ha! No, but seriously. The two foot one just seemed too small to really showcase that artwork that I wanted to showcase and the four foot one just seemed too big for the space that I had. So, I went with the three footer and it fits perfectly.

In addition to the new art shelf, I chose this alphabet print to frame and put in Mason's room. It came with the option to frame it, but I chose just to get the print. I love that it's the alphabet, which makes it more "kid-ish", but it's also not too "little kid", if that makes sense. They had a ton of amazing alphabet designs to choose from, but I wanted one that could go in his room now, but also grow with him.

In his old room I had a bunch of quotes up in little frames on a couple picture ledge shelves. I couldn't figure out where to put them in his new room, so I chose to take a couple of my favorite ones, pair them with our new print, and add a dinosaur themed print to tie in the dinosaur theme I had going for his room. I love how they look together and how the different size and shape frames give it some dimension.

While I only got these two things to add to Mason's room from Minted, they offer a TON more products than just these. Need last minute Valentine's Day cards for your littles for school? They've got that. Need some gorgeous (and I mean gorgeous!) business cards to hand out to clients? They've got that. Need personalized thank you cards to send after your kid's birthday party? They've got those too! Seriously Minted can be your one stop shop for decorating your whole house - master bedrooms to kids rooms to nurseries - sending out moving announcements and then inviting everyone to your housewarming party. Minted has got you covered.

A huge thank you to Minted for helping me decorate Mason's room and really making our house feel like home!

[New House] Mason's Little Man Cave.

I'm super excited to share some photos with you today of Mason's room at our new house. His room was the first that I started decorating after we moved and is one of the first that we have fully finished. I did this purposely because we wanted him to feel at home right away. Sometimes kids with autism do well with change... and sometimes they don't, so we wanted to be prepared in case the latter happened. Thankfully for us, Mason has done well with both of our moves. I made sure to make sure his room was the first one complete at our apartment when we moved at the end of May last year and I even bought a little "welcome home" gift for him. That transition went well, so I had high hopes for this one too, but being the second move in 6 months, I was worried he would be confused on where "home" was and that this would throw him off. I talked it up for DAYS and luckily he went to school the morning we moved, daycare after school, and then ABA therapy after that, so we kept things normal for him, and when he came home, we really talked up how exciting it was that he had this cool new room. If you follow me on Instagram, you may remember how excited he was when he came home and he even said "thank you, mommy, thank you!" to me when I showed him his room. While I didn't feel like I did anything special, I was super happy that he was so excited about his room, enough so to thank me, completely unprompted.

All that being said, Mason is still in love with his room (and our new house) and I often find him playing in there by himself because he's so excited about everything he has in there. We finally finished his room this weekend (last minute decorating), so I thought I'd share it with you today. It's far from Pinterest worthy, but it's cute and functional and I love how it turned out!

Side note: sorry for the bad lighting. It's either super bright or not bright at all. Opening the blinds made it too bright, the lamp made it awkward colored light, and well, I just went with what I had ;)

Welcome!

from the hallway, looking in.

on his wall right when you walk in.

welcome to his little man cave!

if you walk straight in, this is what you'll see, his bookshelf of sorts.

bookself is the old EXPEDIT from IKEA (I don't know what they call them now?)

the rug is a new addition and from IKEA.

we updated the bins in the bookshelf to green for a pop of color from the black that they used to be.

the DIY art gallery wall moved from the living room to Mason's room and is decorated for Valentine's Day right now.

as you turn, you see his little reading nook.

picture ledges are from IKEA.

M-A-S-O-N letters are from Anthropologie.

next to his reading nook is his bed.

bedding is from PBK.

AWESOME pillow is from PBK.

dinosaur pillow is from Land of Nod.

dinosaur picture is from Target.

next to his bed is his dresser.

next to his dresser is his closet.

next to the closet, we hung his M hook.

he keeps his backpack for school here.

backpack is from PBK.

M hook is from Pottery Barn.

view to the rest of the house.

And there you have it! It's pretty simple yet functional. I don't know if this is how it will stay forever, I'm sure we will change things as he grows up (like add a desk for school work), but for now it has somewhat of a dinosaur theme (with some decor and his bedding), but is just kind of all around "boy" themed mainly, if that can be a theme. He also has some stuff stored in his closet, like board games and such, that don't fit on the bookshelf and we have more toys out in the living room on another EXPEDIT that the TV sits on (seriously, toys EVERYWHERE).

I tried to reference where we got most things, in case anyone was interested, but if you'd like a direct link or have a question about where we got anything that I didn't mention, leave a comment below and I'll be sure to tell you!

Aulani 2017 - Part 2

Continued from Thursday's post - Aulani Part 1

When I left you, we had just finished Day 2 of our 4 day, 3 night stay at Aulani. Here's how we spent our last full day at Aulani and the morning before we left for the airport to head to Kauai.

Sorry in advance that some of the photos are blurry. All the photos taken in the pool were with my water proof case for my phone. It had gotten a little foggy the day before when it was raining and I just realized that some look a bit blurry in parts.

Day 3

Day 4

The Magic Kingdom Mamas had recommended that when at Aulani, you walk down the street a little bit to check out Paradise Cove (they used to have a blog post on Aulani, but I think they just updated their website and I can't seem to find it anymore). So, the morning of our third day, we walked down to check it out. It was very secluded and very quiet and we were almost the only ones there that morning. It was absolutely gorgeous and the photos don't do it justice. Had we not had a five year old who wouldn't sit still with us, I would have loved to sit and read and picnic there for a while.

After the beach, we headed across the street to the coffee place for some drinks and some breakfast and then we headed back to the resort for some pool time. We spent the majority of the day at the different pools, in the lazy river, and at the splash pad (Mason's FAVORITE place) as well as enjoying some choice beverages in a pineapple (the Mai Tai's were THE BEST there and on the last day I HAD to have one IN a pineapple - it cost like $9 more but was so worth it!).

We headed to story time at the fire pit with Uncle and Moana, ate dinner, took in one last sunset, and packed up our stuff to head to Kauai the next day.

In the morning, technically day 4, we took one last picture with our wrist bands, had some breakfast, and headed to the airport to continue our vacation with our family!


So, the burning question...
Is Aulani really worth the price? 

Yes and no.

Yes because I think you should definitely go at least once.
No because it was a quite expensive 4 days and I think it is a bit overpriced for what you get.

There is no denying, the resort is GORGEOUS and amazing. I LOVE that they kept it very Hawaiian while still having some touches of Disney. They had character breakfasts (that we didn't do because we could see them here at Disneyland and they were pricey), they had character sightings where you could take pictures, there were things like food items that were Disney themed, and more. Overall though, you felt a very overwhelming sense that you were in Hawaii, not Disneyland, if that makes sense. Would I pay money to be there during the peak season? HECK NO. October was perfect for us. We never had to fight for a pool chair. There were no waits in the restaurants. We got an upgraded room for free. When it was raining outside, the indoor areas were not crowded. There are SO many perks to going in off season, not just the price discount. Sure the weather might be better and hotter in the summer (it was like 75-ish when we were there which was nice outside, but not quite hot enough for the pool for my liking) or it might be more fun and decorative around the holidays, but you could not pay me enough money to be there with all those other people. Nope. Nope. Nope. It's the same reason I avoid Disneyland during the peak times. It's just not fun. I mean, did you see the pictures of Mason at the splash pad on the 3rd day? I mean, he was ALONE for like half the day when he was playing there! That is such a rarity at a Disney place EVER.

Would I go back?

Yes and no lol. I originally said no. I mean, it was fun while it lasted, we experienced it once and I do think it is quite overpriced. BUT having said that, looking back on these photos, and seeing other people's pictures of them there, make me want to go back. It is truly a gorgeous resort with tons of things to do (we never left the resort except to walk across the street to eat). You literally could drop your kids off at the kids club and go to the spa or hang by the adult pool or do whatever (we didn't, but you could). Or you could spend all day with your kids and just explore the area, enjoying the sights and relaxing. Having said that, if we were to go back, I think we'd do Aulani for a couple days, all inclusive, not leave the property, and then head to Honolulu for a few days and explore around over there. I've never been to Oahu besides this trip and I'd really like to explore a bit and see Pearl Harbor.

Any questions about anything I didn't cover... just ask!