I am delighted to introduce the second of Life With Lorelai’s Regular Contributors, Michelle James, with Guest Room Essentials. You may remember Michelle from her time as a co-host at the Home Matters Linky Party. See her brief bio at the end of the post.

Michelle is sharing a way to make your Guest Room more welcoming.

Guest Room Essentials

I am so excited to be a new contributor on Life with Lorelai, and I could not wait to get started. I have been working hard to create a guest-worthy room for people who stay at my house. We don’t get many guests, but when we do, I want them to feel welcome. So, I created some guest room essentials and put them together into a fun, sectioned, wire-mesh “basket.”

Create Guest Room Essentials and put them into a fun basket. #GuestRoom #GuestRoomIdeas

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I have made-over this room along with most of the furniture, and it has been a real labor of love. The paint on the walls was done when my oldest son was in Jr. High School, and I just couldn’t bear to change it. So, I designed the room with the walls in mind.

I have added the dresser, the vanity mirror, and the bedside tables, plus more. And, it has been a blast.

Now, I am down to some finishing touches. I wanted to add a small welcome basket of some sort; so, I came up with this guest room Essentials “basket.”

I found the black basket at a garage sale for 25¢, and I knew this is how it would be used. I wanted to label the sections, and I had the bookplate pulls already. I decided to use brads to attach them to the basket, and it worked great.

I placed the brad through the hole in the bookplate and into the side of the basket; then, bent them to the side. Here is a view of the back of the bookplate.

Now, I needed labels to insert into the bookplates. I love labels don’t you? The label is small, and I had to keep my letters in a 2-inch by 1-inch space. I printed these categories: Essentials, Clean, and Snack.

In the Essentials section, I added toothbrushes, a small tube of toothpaste, floss, some hand lotion, and a razor. I still want to add the travel size shampoo and conditioner.

The Clean section includes four washcloths, and the Snack section will vary a lot so the food isn’t stale. My youngest son is coming home this weekend; so, I added some cheesy snack crackers and a small bag of mini cookies. I think he will like my choices.