Margaret's Tiny, Perfect Nursery

With Margaret turning fifteen months, this room finally being painted after an unfortunate humidifier incident that left streaks all down the walls, and the fact that Christmas is over and I needed to clean all the things I thought it was the perfect time to finally take some pictures to document her nursery/soon to be big girl room.

The two things to know beforehand are, one, my house is not nearly as yellow as it appears in photographs and two, this room is tiny.  Like, the previous renters were using it as a walk-in closet tiny.   After much deliberation, we decided we would go ahead and sacrifice the extra closet space in favor of having sleeping quarters for all the children :)

I just love this room.  It's tiny but it's wonderful.  I know The Nester says that it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful, but I'll add that it doesn't have to be spacious, or expensive, to be adorable.

Margaret's room is full of special things--the sampler my grandmother made, the cross stitched pieces that were once pillows on my girlhood bed that I salvaged and framed, my old ballerina teddy bear, the "R" that hung over Chris' crib, the other teddy bears from his grandmother, the frames I found on the side of the road--okay I guess not everything is special.

Even if it isn't all special, everything in the room did come together very serendipitously.  Having a tiny nursery is kind of wonderful in the sense that it's easy to pull together.  It can really only hold the crib, dresser and rocker.  We already had the crib and the dresser, and the rocker was a gift from Grandma and Grandpa Reintjes.  It began its life wearing a shade of green that wasn't particularly the look I was going for so Chris, dutiful husband that he is, stripped, sanded and stained it for me.

Almost everything else was gathered from around the house.  I suppose the one perk of moving with a two week old is that you can shuffle things to new rooms with ease.  The only new things in her room were the crib sheet and rug which were gifted to us as well and the new wet bags that we clearly needed since the old ones clashed horrifically.  Chris didn't understand, but I'm sure you do--the effect of the sad old navy blue ones hanging on the closet door wasn't what you'd call pleasing to the eye.

I made the rest of the textiles myself; the curtains, the crib skirt and of course the quilt and pillow that took forever but were very cathartic when waiting out the second half of my pregnancy.  I had kind of a specific look I was going for--I'm not sure what you would call my decorating style, vintage? cottage? farmhouse? artistically hodgepodged from things we get for free?  (when I'm "decorating" I'm mostly just rearranging things we already have, although we have acquired some really nice freebies over the years which certainly helps)--anyway, I couldn't afford/find exactly what I wanted anyway, even if I did want to pay for it--which I didn't.

I had a lot of years to think about how I would decorate a little girl's nursery if I ever had one, but I didn't realize until I actually did have one what my thoughts on little girl nurseries were.  It turns out that I think they should be very similar to my childhood rooms.  That is, very Laura Ashley circa 1983 or so.  Sweet colors, vintage florals, lots of cross-stitch, ruffles, dolls and teddy bears.  I've tried to restrain myself--and the size of the room, my dislike of clutter and also my budget have certainly helped.  But if anyone catches me attempting to start a collection of Madame Alexander dolls you have my permission to stage an immediate intervention.

...

All the glorious details:

crib:  Amazon
crib skirt:  handmade by me
crib sheet:  Pottery Barn Kids, a gift from Aunt Courtney
curtains:  handmade by me
pillow:  handmade by me
quilt:  me again :)
dresser: second hand
rocking chair:  second hand, a gift from Grandma and Grandpa Reintjes
blue throw blanket:  vintage, from Grandma Reintjes
shelves:  Lowe's
rug:  Wayfair, a gift from Grandma Kazleman
ledge shelves:  Ana White plans built by Chris

~Amazon links are affiliate links~

On Making the Most Fantastic Curtains You Have Ever Seen

Well, okay.  They might not be the most fantastic curtains you have ever seen but they are still pretty fantastic.  

First, the back story.  After we moved in I bemoaned the fact that in a fit of senseless frugality I hadn't bought the rest of the sheets at the thrift store that matched the pillow case that was the inspiration for Margaret's quilt because they would have made great coordinating curtains.  Then one night as I was looking at vintage sheets on Etsy (which I'm sure is a totally normal thing to be doing) I found a listing for a set of queen sized sheets in the exact same pattern.  I don't know what the odds are of finding another set of these old sheets but I took it as a sign and snatched them up--ironically for about ten dollars more than it would have cost me if I had just bought them originally.

I then spent a lot of time unnecessarily trying to decide if I should make long elegant curtains or short cute curtains before I just decided to make them as long as I could given my limited amount of fabric and then hem them up if they looked bad.  The length of the flat sheet ended up being perfect, which is lucky since, you know, that's all I had.  I also lined them with the old twin size white flat sheets that I confiscated from the boys when I decided that I wasn't going to make children's beds with flat sheets on them ever again so that's how wide the curtains are.

Clearly I am a very precise and professional seamstress.

It's really hard to take pictures of curtains with light shining through the windows but I did my best.

The men folk round these parts weren't super impressed, but aren't they sweet?   The curtains that is, not the men folk.  Clearly they're a bit grumpy.

Margaret loves them of course.  If she had words or was able to do more than flail her arms and legs while lying on her back I'm sure she'd be dancing around and singing about how amazing they are.

Once I finished the panels I realized that the one thing that would make them even more spectacular was pom pom trim.  I'm pretty sure pom pom trim makes everything better.  I got this trim from the same Etsy seller I used when I made the crib skirt so it would match.

On another note, pleating tape.  Where have you been all my life?  You just sew this stuff across the top of your curtain panels, pull the strings and congratulations, you've just made pleated curtains.  So easy!

See how nicely everything goes?  Note, don't try to stand on your rocking chair to take aerial pictures  of your nursery.  Your photographs will be blurry and you will probably fall off.  Just take the extra three seconds to grab a stool from the bathroom. You're welcome.

Now, make sure to tell me what you think!  Unless you don't like them, feel free to keep that to yourself :)

Linking up with Ana since it's still February and I need more affirmations than my menfolk can provide on all things crafty :)

New Year, New Room

Moving all the time is hard.  Constantly rearranging furniture into new houses and reimagining where things might go or how they might be used in a different way or in a different room can be draining--at least for me.  But then, I tend to overthink things.

When we were househunting one of the main things I wanted was a dedicated and usable space for all the toys,books and school stuff we have managed to accumulate over the last few years so that at the end of the day everything could be put away and not continuously spread out over our dining room table.   In our Florida house we had a little room that did hold most of that sort of thing but it wasn't a space anyone wanted to spend any time in--mostly it was a storage room/hallway into the rest of the house from the backyard/sandpit which meant that when we did schoolwork I had to carry it from that room to the table and then back again.  Not awful, but not ideal.

From the moment I set eyes on our new little yellow house I knew that the sunroom would be the perfect playroom/homeschool room/library.  That may seem like unreasonably high expectations for what one room can accomplish, but I think we pulled it off without the room seeming too ridiculously overcrowded. There's room to play, room to do schoolwork and room for all  most of our books.  It's my favorite room of the house, which is good since it's where I spend a good portion of my day.

It's also a really long and narrow room which means it's really difficult to photograph especially for someone with mediocre photography skills such as myself.  So....consider yourself warned.....I am not a professional room photographer/decorator/blogger/etc/etc/etc......

My original vision for this corner involved using our IKEA Expedit shelf to wrap that back corner in an amazing, if not very original, toy and children's book storage solution.  Unfortunately and unbeknownst to me, IKEA discontinued the Expedit and replaced it with something just slightly smaller which meant it would look silly next to what I already had so I had to buy all new ones and bump our current shelf up to the boys room.  Lame.

Now, Chris detests IKEA and would pretty much prefer to go anywhere else but he also doesn't want me lifting boxes of bookshelves and attempting to shove them into the car alone so I carefully made a list of exactly what I needed and tried to give it to him so he could make a quick trip without me wanting to browse through all the fake rooms while dragging the screaming children along but he said he didn't need a list.  He had everything he needed right inside his brain.  He went to the store, came home and assembled the shelves.

I inspected his work and asked him where the rest of the boxes were.

He stared at me in dawning horror as I explained to him that I wanted three shelves and he had only bought two and the realization hit him that he would have to return once again to that most hated of all Swedish meatball selling home furnishing stores.

Poor husband.  It was all worth it though.    

Yes, yes I do let my toddler climb on top of the shelves and also play with glass jars....judge me if you must......

Luckily for Chris, our other IKEA bookshelves fit perfectly into room along the opposite wall.   And our chalkboard fit right over the fireplace on the nails that were already there.  It would probably look nicer hung a little higher but it doesn't bother me enough to put more nails into the brick.

The curtains were the next big project I tackled.  The room came with floor length, tie top panels that had seen better days.

Much better days.

I took them all down and almost threw them out, but then, in a burst of make-do attitude, I decided to attempt to revitalize them.  After a couple of days soaking in oxi-clean and a trip or two through the wash they were as good as new.  The length didn't work with all the bookcases and benches that I have lining the walls though, so I hemmed them all up (so many panels!), cut off the ties and added ring clips.  I'm really pleased with how they turned out--hopefully our landlord is too :)

The other side of the room houses our little school corner.  Chris painted the benches he built for me in Pennsylvania a nice bright white to match the rest of the shelves and I made some cushions--which also turned out pretty well if I do say so myself :)

The benches are super comfy now and also hold all our games and puzzles so all in all they're pretty amazing.  The cushions get a little wrinkly--probably because I used cotton I already had instead of upholstery fabric--but they wash up really nicely which is important.  Things tend to happen in our house.  Messy, often inexplicable things......

The shelf in this corner holds all our homeschool books and things which is much more convenient than having them all in another room.  Now in the mornings David and I can work on schoolwork here while the rest of the kids play at the other end of the room.  It's kind of wonderful.

My curtains aren't all exactly what you'd call even, my cushions are a little wrinkly, and let's face it--my bookshelves are already dusty but I had a vision and I made it come to life using mostly things I had on hand and now we have a really cute and functional room.  My favorite room.  And I'm just a little bit proud of myself for that.

On Getting Things Done

At any given time I've got a lot of plans for things to do around the house percolating in my brain.  A lot of plans.  Unfortunately for my lets get it done now husband, I like to think about things and then think about them some more and then once I think I've finally decided on a plan I give it one more night juuuuust to be sure.....because you know, if you can't do something perfectly right the first time why bother doing it at all?  No?  Is that not how well adjusted grown-ups do things?

One of my resolutions for this year is to stop planning already and to just get things done, even if they aren't perfect and things need tweaking later....that's probably not that exciting of a resolution but it's an uphill battle for me!  I'm really good at making plans and really bad at putting them in action.

Well anyway, I found this typesetter tray at a flea market last summer for five dollars and it's been sitting in the garage ever since, waiting for me to decide on its future (most perfect) location and purpose.  I almost gave it over to the boys to house their growing collection of lego minifigures but in the end I wanted it for myself :)

Task 1 on the Getting Things Done in 2014 List:  Our new nature treasures display......

The boys worked together to fill it in with all their treasures......which also allowed me to work on my other resolution of not inflicting my will on my minions when it comes to needing things done the 'right' way so long as things just get done.  This goes for children's bed making and laundry folding efforts as well.......

These aren't technically all the boys' treasures.  That rock up top is something I picked up when I was about five and living in California.  I found it while walking from my house to the Burger King to get my very favorite thing in the world at the time--a soggy chicken sandwich eaten in a mock circus train---mmmmm......fine dining.   I remember being really disappointed when everyone agreed that my treasure was not in fact a real hunk of diamond and not valuable in the least.  But I've managed to carry it around for the last twenty-six years so I guess it had value to me :)

Henry's been busy rearranging nature treasures all afternoon and Chris is taking bets on how long it will take for the baby to crawl up on those boxes and send the whole thing to its doom.  His current favorite thing to do is to climb on top of the boxes and then scream for someone to get him down because he's stuck and then repeat the process elevendy-billion times a day so the odds do seem to be against me........

I'm sure none of my children would never be so naughty as that though.

Getting things done sure does feels good :)

A Big Boy Room

You may recall that I lost the Bunk Bed Battle of 2013 and the boys' beds are officially much higher than I would prefer but their father is thrilled.  I did get a minor revenge victory when I informed Chris that if we were going to bunk the beds we really needed to put them right where the forward facing book shelves were hanging so the shelves were all going to have to be moved.  So......that's something.  

Well, the room was finally clean enough to take a couple of pictures of, and apparently Aunt Kate hasn't been the recipient of one of David's facetime bedroom tours and was dying to know just what we did*, so.......you're welcome.......

The Before.

The After:

I can't get a picture of the whole room at once so I'll have to spin you around.  Here we have the beds, one dresser full of clothes and another full of legos....you know, the necessities.......

Grandpa's medals are now out of storage and proudly displayed.

With all of the added floor space we were able to move all the toys out of the living room and into their new home.  Of course most of them are still dragged back out to the living room daily but, you win some, you lose some.  Who can fault my sweet boys for wanting to play where mommy is?  :)

On the other side of the room we moved the rest of the toys and the bookshelves to make a kind of reading/lego nook in front of the window......

For a more accurate picture of the room, imagine this area except with all of the books on the floor covering a pile of cars with a thin layer of legos underneath--clear ones, the kind that are invisible to the naked eye but not to the naked foot.  Also there is at least one child standing on top of that dresser about to fling himself onto all of the bedding in the room that has been piled on the floor to form a "nest" next to the naked bed.

Looking at these pictures, I'm thinking I really should just choose a pair of curtains from my giant curtain pile in the linen closet already and get them hung up......I'm sure I'll get around to that one of these days..........

And for the grand finale, we've got this wall-o-closets that takes up one whole side of the room.  One side of the closet houses extra toys and the boys' memory boxes.

The other side houses our play kitchen and one crazy faced child........

And, that's about it.  I apologize if you've been underwhelmed :)

I suppose it still has a bit of a nautical feel although I'm totally over making "themed" rooms and have moved on to "putting things in the children's rooms that they won't hate in five years and want me to replace."  I'm thinking it's a better way to go--for my sanity and my wallet.

*I'm totally exaggerating, Aunt Kate was only mildly interested.  I'm just an internet over-sharer.