Getting the heart and home ready for Ramadan

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It’s been a busy year for us and we are very grateful for all the fun projects and renovations we were able to do. However, with Ramadan just around the corner, we want to wind down a bit and focus on family and spirituality. It’s hard to believe that our babies are growing so fast (our son is turning two in just a month and our daughter will be turning 7 months) but now that they’re more attentive and communicative, we want to make the month extra special so they can grow up with fond and happy memories of our Ramadans together. For us, Ramadan is a month for reflection and growth. We enter this month as warriors, much like Paulo Coehlo’s Warriors of Light:

“Warriors of light are not perfect.Their beauty lies in accepting this fact and still desiring to grow and to learn.”

I wanted to capture this free-spirited approach in decorating our home and this sort of transformed into a colorful bohemian style tablescape since the dinning area is really where the family comes together to break bread and unwind after a long day of fasting. In this post I’ll be sharing some decor inspiration from our Ramadan preparations, including a family-friendly DIY project and a free printable you can frame to either hang up or place on your dinning table.

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This tablescape looks a lot fancier than it is. At the heart of it is a DIY Table Runner which is super easy to put together. I even had my son help out with the painting and he had a blast! All you’ll need is an inexpensive white table runner, a mandala or doily stencil, acrylic paint for fabric, and stencil brushes. The rest is self-explanatory. I probably could have done a much better job but I was painting with a toddler so we got a little carried away with dipping the brush in paint.

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Besides the table runner, all you’ll need to achieve this look are a variety of colorful vases (and/or ornate lanterns) filled with fresh summer flowers. The vases you see in the images are ones that I thrifted from a local Goodwill for $3 total. The spirit of Ramadan is also about humility so I didn’t want to create a space that was too extravagant or wasteful. I arranged the vases along the table, intertwined with crawling vine garland ( I bought on clearance) and in between these pretty palm leaf placemats. I also created a framed quote art out of one of our favorite supplications that we listen to just before iftar time. I wanted it to be a reminder on the table that aside from all the delicious food we get to eat, Ramadan is so much more than that. It is about reconnecting with God and softening our hearts so that we can be better, more empathetic human beings.

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In the home, I hung up lanterns and garland from the ceiling that I had purchased in a hanging decor kit from Michaels. The colors matched up very nicely with the bohemian color palette I had saved on Pinterest. Decorating with family is such a wonderful way to build memories and traditions. My son was very excited about standing on the table with me to hang these up and it put the biggest smile on my face seeing him gush with joy as he pulled out the tape from the dispenser in an effort to “help me.”

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On the wall behind the dinning table, I hung up a Ramadan advent calendar that I purchased from Handmade Beginnings. Not only is it beautiful but it’s perfect for making each day interactive and for making the countdown to Eid fun and exciting for little ones. Since my children are still young, I am choosing an activity that is simple and age appropriate. I found these free Ramadan coloring pages on Crayola’s website so what I plan to do is get a 30+ count marker or crayon set and put a different color in each  of the calendar’s pouches. Each day we will pull out a new color and work on our Ramadan page and hopefully by the end of the month (and just in time for Eid) we will have a pretty piece of art to hang up 🙂

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There you have it. An expensive and simple way to add a colorful touch to your table and home for Ramadan. I really wanted a space that was special, vibrant, and cozy for our family and our dinner guests and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

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What do you think? What are your favorite ways to make Ramadan special for your family?

Free Download:  Ramadan Printable_Color |Ramadan Printable_Black

 

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One Room Challenge: Week 6|Bathroom Renovation Reveal

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Yesterday marked week 6 of Calling It Home’s One Room Challenge™ and that means it’s reveal time! We are so excited to share the results with you and see what other awesome bloggers have done. Seriously, after you’re done with this post go check out some of the other transformations. You will not be disappointed!

ORCI wasn’t able to take pictures sooner because we were out of the house yesterday and we have guests staying with us but I finally got around to it this morning. We thought we would have a little more time to decorate but time is up! There are still a few things we will be finishing up this weekend including installing the glass shower door, putting in the toilet paper bar (which will be back in stock at IKEA on May 14th), and staining the new window sill moulding but the bathroom is fully functional and oh so awesome. We also realized that we had not been properly linking up our posts to the Calling It Home site and we were a little discouraged that we had done all this work for nothing. But this renovation isn’t for everyone else. It’s for us.  All the sweat and blood (literally) that went into this project was for our family’s comfort and so before we get to the reveal, we thought we would recap our six weeks of hard work.

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Week 1 | Bathroom Renovation Preparation

IMG_1590Week 2 | Bathroom Renovation Demolition

IMG_1597Week 3 | Laying the Foundation for Tile

IMG_6453Week 4 | Mudding and Tiling a Bathroom

IMG_6526Week 5 | Tiling and Decorating a Bathroom

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that we ran into some issues that cost us precious time. Because of that, we literally spent every day this last week working well into the early morning hours in order to finish on time. In just one week, we grouted and sealed the entire bathroom, primed and painted the walls, assembled and installed the vanity and storage cabinet, installed shelving and lighting, cleaned and caulked everything, and had the plumber come and connect the plumbing. Was it worth it? Totally! Although some features were not our first choice, we are very happy with the results. As you will see soon, our bathroom is unrecognizable. The white subway and Carrara marble tile totally brightened up and opened up the space. It looks so much bigger! Our favorite part, however, is the accent wall in the shower. We cannot wait to bathe the babies and enjoy the beautiful view. Without further ado…

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What do you think of the transformation? We would love to hear from you in the comments below. You can also follow along on Instagram @thecozyhomechronicles for other fun DIYs and projects. Up next is our summer garden 🙂

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One Room Challenge: Week 5|Tiling and Decor Inspiration

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Today marks week 5 of Calling It Home’s One Room Challenge™ and that means we are less than one week away from the final reveal. We thought we would have a little more finished this week but with a grant application deadline that my wife needed to submit for, things got pushed to the side. As of now, all the tile has been laid on the floor and walls and we are getting ready to grout tomorrow. We have had our fair share of cuts and bruises (not to mention fatigue) but we are finally nearing the finish line and are so excited to share with you.

All right! Here’s what we have left to do:

1. Grout and clean the haze

3. Prime and paint the non-tiled walls

4. Install vanity, toilet, storage cabinet, and other accessories

5. Decorate and style

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Progress:
Einstein was really on to something when he came up with his theory of relativity. It’s seriously hard to believe that we have been working on this project for a month now! To recap: We demoed and gutted the bathroom, installed the new bathtub and had the pipes replaced, installed new cement boards and insulation, mudded and tiled everything. Tiling was not hard but it was tedious because of all the cuts I had to make. The good news is that grouting shouldn’t take more than a few hours (if we can actually settle on a grout color). After that the plan is to do minor touch-ups to the drywall and then prime and paint. If all goes according to schedule, we hope to install the vanity this weekend and get the bathroom ready for the final photoshoot.

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This past weekend we went and picked out our bathroom furniture from IKEA and it was a bit more difficult than we had anticipated. The vanity series that we really liked only came in two depths: 11″ and 19″. Both of these were on the extreme ends of what we wanted. Ideally, we were looking for something around 15-16″ to maximize storage efficiency and spaciousness. We found exactly that but in a color that we weren’t so sure about. In the end we had to make the sacrifice and go with this one in black-brown. The major upside to this was the vanity sink. Every single thing about the sink that comes with this vanity series is beautiful and perfect. Okay, I know I’m talking about a sink here but it truly is a thing to behold.

lillangen-sink-white__0381414_PE556140_S4The light fixture was something else that we had to settle on this week and we went with an inexpensive bath bar light and these awesome filament globe bulbs. It might look simple but with the specific lightbulbs we chose,  it looks really cool.

Decor Inspiration:
We put together a mood board of inspiring decor items from IKEA, Target, Etsy, Urban Outfitters, and Anthropologie. We are not going to necessarily buy all of these things but creating this helped us decide on the look that we are going for: something earth-inspired, calming, and with a splash of color.

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At the center of the mood board is a quote art that my wife made herself. It’s something our son always says when he’s splashing around in the bath and we thought it would make for a nice bathroom wall decor. We are also providing it to you as a free download printable. Think of it is a gift of appreciation for putting up with us and our crazy projects all this time 🙂

Printable Wall Art: splishsplash

Anyways, we could have shown you more progress shots but we will save that for next week. There’s nothing worse than a trailer that gives away a movie’s plot. The accent wall turned out more amazing than we could have thought so we will just let you revel in that thought until you can see it for yourself in next week’s final post.

Would you like to see our progress as it unfolds? You can also follow along on Instagram @thecozyhomechronicles for behind-the-scene videos!

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