Brothers Share 100 Square Feet

Once again, we did another reorganization to accommodate some sort of new sleeping arrangement.  For a good year now, I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to fit all three kids into one room - a room that is just under 100 square feet (about 9'x11').  For a long time, I just sort of threw up my hands, called it impossible, and declared that we must move by the time the toddler turned two.  Well, moving isn't an option at the moment thanks to many things out of my control, so I was forced to put my spatial-reasoning hat on (one that fits me really well actually, thanks to freakish innate ability and an architecture degree), and figure this out.  The toddler was getting lonely in his closet, and we were a little tired of sharing a room with him.  Last weekend, for the first time, he tried to insist on sleeping in one of his big brothers' beds, and so we knew that the time for transition was upon us. 
For awhile, I thought we'd have to do some major rearranging, including moving the bookcase into the hallway, installing a floating shelf up by the top bunk, buying an extra tall-skinny dresser, etc.  After much consideration, and many other ideas, I realized that all I had to do was move the boys' dressers about 5" and then a toddler bed would fit in the corner under the windows.  That was it.  I was able to clear out the top dresser drawer in each boy's dresser to accommodate toddler clothing, so no new dresser was needed, and the bookshelf didn't need to move, because the bed didn't need to be oriented that direction.  Seriously, I was a Tetris-master as a teenager, and it still serves me well.
The best part about this was that, like the closet-nursery, it cost us very little money.  In order to make some room, I had to sell our play kitchen, and I got rid of our pack-and-play, because that era of our lives is over.  Between the two of these things, the proceeds pretty much covered the cost of the toddler bed (by KidKraft, on Amazon, very easily assembled, and sturdy).  I asked around and found a spare crib mattress in good condition that someone wanted to get rid of (so we can keep the crib assembled for a quiet nap-space).  I cleaned out both the closet and the space under the bunkbed and did a bunch of reorganization/decluttering so that I could clear off the dresser for the changing area.  I love how clean it all looks, and I feel like this is a functional solution that will get us through another year in our small space.  It actually makes me feel like it really isn't necessary to have tons of space - organization, and living simply are way more important.  When we eventually move, regardless of how many bedrooms we have, we will probably keep all three together until the older ones don't like the arrangement.  Right now, none of them can imagine the idea of not sharing a room.  They love the company, we love having our bedroom to ourselves again.  It feels like such a luxury to be able to turn on lights and talk to each other when we are getting ready for bed.  It's amazing, actually. 

We moved him in a few days ago, on just the mattress, before the toddler bed arrived.  He is doing flawlessly.  He very obediently stays in his bed and goes to sleep, and he wakes up aright around 7, and has two brothers to chat with before he comes and finds us.  He had a little bit of a hard time staying on his mattress, so I tucked a pool noodle under the sheet and that helped a lot.

Now that he is in a bed, I pulled out the amazing quilt my mom made for him.  I love it so much - a quilt with buildings on it!  The little taxi she added, matches the edge-fabric.  If we had more wall space, I would hang it up, because I think it's pretty much a work of art.

Beautifying for Fall

I have ignored this blog for a very long time.  Why?  Mostly because I am completely sucked in to watching West Wing on Amazon Prime and I have to stream it through my computer, so it is unavailable for anything else.  Lame, perhaps, but that is mostly the reason.  Well, that and the fact that school started and now I spend most of my week being a taxi driver and by the time I am finally home for the day, the last thing I feel like doing is...anything.  I will probably back-date a few posts, though, so go ahead and scroll down if you wish.
And now, for the highlights of this year's Fall decor.  I found this idea on pinterest and LOVE the results.  It is just a bunch of cardstock bats that I cut with a template and then attached to the wall with that gummy wall adhesive. I like them so much, I am considering making more for another wall.

I love festive garlands.  Felt is such a great medium for holiday decor because it is cheap and easy to work with.  It also lasts for more than one season.  I was thinking about how to incorporate some Fall leaves into my living room and I came up with an idea to make a garland of leaves. 

• I chose a bunch of appropriate colors of felt. 
• Then I made a template of two different sizes of maple leaves out of cookie cutters traced onto cardstock.
• Then I cut out equal numbers of large and small leaves.
• I sewed the large leaves together with a simple stitch about 1/4 of the way down from the stem (through the widest part of the leaf). 
• I sewed a ribbon loop onto each end.
• Using fabric glue, I glued the smaller leaf over the large leaf to give the garland depth and to hide the stitch.

I chose to create a random-colored garland.  If you are in need of strict order, I'm sure a pattern would look equally nice.  I just liked the diversity because it reminds me of how leaves change and fall from the trees this time of year.  It is never in a very uniform way.  In fact, we live on a wonderful tree-lined street.  Our particular place is on a long-block (equivalent to three city blocks with no breaks) and every tree is the same except for a single Thundercloud Cherry.  I hate that kind of tree.  Its leaves are this ominous dark purple/black.  Alas, diversity.  I was thinking today how it gives the street character.

 And one last thing related to Fall...I LOVE this candle.  It has a nice, spicy pumpkin smell.  Brought to you by Bath & Body Works.

 



Boys' Room Redux

The constant marching of time - or the continual stretching of a certain almost-five-year-old - has caused me to revisit the boys' room once again.  The toddler beds had to go and since our boys share a room that is approximately 100 square feet, bunkbeds were our only option.  So, we did lots of research, I drove my husband nuts with asking his opinion on things, and in the ends, we bought the sturdiest set we could find - and they were conveniently at our local all-wood furniture store just two blocks away.  Since they were going to be such a massive piece of furniture in such a small room, I chose a clear wood finish. 
As well as new beds, we also decided on new dressers for the boys.  The previous iteration of this room had one six-drawer vertical dresser.  The little one's clothes were up high.  Since then we have realized that he needs to be able to reach his own clothes in order to progress to that stage of wanting to dress himself (duh!).  So, we went cheap: two four-drawer malms in a light wood finish.  I decided to jazz them up a little bit with some giant vinyl letters of the boys' initials.  This served the dual purpose of looking cool and helping them to know where their clothes were kept.
That's the basics of why and what we did in their room.  Now for the inspiration for decor.  About a year-and-a-half ago, I came across the most awesome modern children's bedding by a company called Boodalee, which was sadly going out of business.  I scored two duvet covers at a highly discounted price and then poof! the company vanished into thin air.  I love the fabric.  It is architectural.  It is fun.  It is bright.  It is more like sophisticated-child than super-cliche boy.  The colors were interesting.  I never would have thought I'd be decorating with teal, but the combination of teal and green with grsy and black is completely wonderful.  I love using blacks and grays and white to make colors pop.
The added storage in this new iteration is ridiculous.  The lower bed has a full 12" clear underneath it.  So, after I stuck our pack-n-play, co-sleeper, travel cot, luggage and spare diapers/pull ups, I bought four Ikea storage cubes (found in the kid's section) with wheels on the bottom.  They hold dress-up hats, all the boys' shoes, trucks and balls.  I also scored two extra dresser drawers.  One is for linens and one is for out-of-season-clothes. 
What's new in the room:
~~On the curtains, I covered the previous stripes with new stripes to match the updated color-scheme.
~~I bought a new paper-lantern-star.
~~New dressers as mentioned above.
~~New bed.
Everything else is still the same.  Same bookcase, pictures, etc.  Due to the cost of the bunkbeds (we chose sturdy over cheap - we live in an earthquake zone), I wanted to get everything else done with the money I made from selling the toddler beds and a couple other baby things we were done with.  I managed to do it! 
What do the boys think?  They love these beds.  The little one is prone to nesting anyway, so he likes his lower bunk.  The older one likes the "view" from his bed.  I will admit, though, that more than once so far we've found them both curled up asleep on that top bunk.  After climbing up and down that ladder for a week, I am also noticing both kids are more confident on play structure equipment, which is an added bonus.
It's funny what different furniture does to a room.  In this case, it made the room feel much more orderly and organized, but also more long and narrow.
Here is the updated room:

Boys *NEW* Room - Sneak Peak

I've been in the process of yet another iteration of the boys' room due to our need to upgrade to bunkbeds (that older monkey just keeps on stretching).  I purchased duvet covers from Boodalee about a year and a half ago while the company was liquidating.  I loved the modern fabric *and* it had a definite architectural-bent to it which was a bonus for me...more on that in the near future.  I bring it up because the duvet covers drove the slight color-scheme change.  We went from blue/green/black/white to teal/green/black/grey and I LOVE it.  I love it so much, I decided it warranted a new star-light.  Here it is:

Tonight's decor tip is simply this: these paper-lantern-stars are a GREAT and relatively cheap way to add some interest to a room.  I bought this one at Fireworks (an incredibly fun store if you've never been in) in downtown Seattle, but they sell them all over the place.  This one just happened to be the exact right colors I was looking for.
Stay tuned for more pictures of the transformation.

Book Storage

Before we had kids, we were the kind of couple who would go out to dinner on a Friday or Saturday night and then spend an hour or two perusing one of many local used bookstores (all have sadly closed now).  We both love books.  We have always had dreams of having a big, thorough library - probably for different reasons, but nonetheless.  We inherited a couple of large solid oak bookcases from my parents and both, at one time, were completely full - and my husband has a third one at his office that is also completely full.  We own a lot of books.  We own a kindle too, and see the convenience of it, but we still have a thing for real books.
Having kids and living in a small space has temporarily dampened our dream of a giant library.  We had to condense down to one bookcase in our dining room.  The rest of the books were either purged or are boxed up in various closets around our place.  Being the purge-queen that I am, I took a very hard look at the books which were mine and got rid of A LOT of them, thinking they would be replaceable easily later on.  My husband, however, monk that he is ordinarily, just couldn't/wouldn't purge his books.  So, someday I hope we will have an office where we can do a whole wall of built-ins. 

So for the last few years, we've had this giant (ugly) bookcase in our dining room.  I sit on the couch and look at it and it has bugged me for a very long time.  It just looked cluttered and didn't match our other decor.  I was also concerned about our younger monkey attempting to climb it.  Last fall I came up with a great plan to fix this wall and all it involved was a fairly cheap trip to Ikea.  I finally got my husband on board when he realized he actually needed the bookshelf-space of that oak bookcase in his office.  Off the kids and I went to Ikea.  I actually was able to fit all the pieces into the trunk of my Jetta.  I was hoping my new solution would offer more storage space, but in the end it stores exactly the same amount of books as before.  At least it looks MUCH better!  Behold: three billy bookcases, two of which we put cabinet doors on.  I wanted to put doors on all three bookcases, but sadly, the billy is rather narrow and some of our larger books needed the space to stick out a little bit.  My favorite thing?  All our movies (mostly kid-movies) are now behind a door and I don't have to look at them.

About the artwork.  Just more proof of how much we love our kids.  We found these prints at a model train show we take our kids to every year.  The artist sets up a booth every year and I fell in love with the colors in that Santa Fe painting last year.  This year we let our older son pick out two more knowing we were going to hang them above our new bookcases.  I also discovered that frames and mats are very cheap through Amazon and the quality is great for the price.

Boys' Room: Complete!

Whew!  With the completion of the bookcase, I finally finished the boys' bedroom redesign.  I have to say, I love it!  I feel like I was able to maximize the space available - 100 square feet - and add a lot of color without even being able to paint any walls.  Would you like to know what the biggest design challenge was?  Surprisingly enough, I'd say it was that corner window.  When we first looked at this apartment 5 years ago, before we had kids, I knew I wanted it when I saw the giant walk-in closet in the master bedroom AND that corner window.  I have always loved them.  I can't tell you why.  This one is glorious.  It faces North and East and gets the most fabulous morning light.  BUT, it makes it really hard to place furniture - especially two little beds.  So that is why the furniture arrangement might look a bit arbitrary - trust me, the woman who lays out everything to-scale before moving any furniture - this was the ONLY way it would work.  I was determined, since the window sills are low, to not put a bed in front of the window.  I'll get more to window-safety in my true-confessions part at the end.
This whole transition-to-a-big-boy-room thing started back in April when the little one attempted a Superman-esque dive from his crib.  He ended up high-centered on his tummy (somewhat thankfully) and at that point, we knew it was time to make the move.  We had originally wanted to wait until he was as old as possible to move him out of his crib so we could go straight to bunkbeds, but this was a game-changer.  Lucky me, I found a matching blue Mammut bed on craigslist the very next day for quite a steal-of-a-deal (and it was in mint condition - amazing).  My budget was pretty much whatever I could sell the rocking chair and the low 6-drawer dresser for (and I threw selling our double stroller which we were no longer using into the mix to give me a little more to work with).  So, with two blue Mammut beds, a small room, not much of a budget and a request for GREEN, GREEN, GREEN from the older half of the peanut gallery, I started wracking my brain for inspiration.  It took a long time to come up with it, but during a wander through Target, I found these white/black cityscape pillows which I loved and I immediately knew I wanted to do black/white with blue/green accents.  I found fuzzy black blankets to go with their plain white Ikea sheets (the Mammut is a weird size that is neither crib-size nor twin-size so I can only buy sheets for it at Ikea).  A couple of days later, I found these postage-themed decals on a deal-a-day website and I knew they needed desperately to go on a Hopen dresser.  While I was at Ikea for said dresser, I grabbed the green chairs and little tables and it started to come together in my mind.  I was on a roll.  Since I like moder, clean-lined furniture and I'm on a budget, Ikea is my friend.  The problem with this, though, is with a house full of Ikea, it's hard to make it look unique and different and NOT straight out of one of their catalogs (inspiring though they are).  Enter the bookcase which we already had: I decided to paint the bookcase some sort of bright color and figured I would probably never match that bright Ikea blue, so maybe I should go for green.  It stopped me in my tracks - I was afraid to begin that particular project.  Three months later, I got up the nerve to paint it finally and that is a story for the previous post.
About the artwork.  The painting of the child with Jesus was the first thing I bought when I found out I was pregnant with our older son.  I love it and it is special to us also given the importance of religion in our home.  It deserved the prime above-the-dresser real estate.  I found the London map at an art store - it's actually a piece of wrapping paper.  The name-art, I made also and can be found in a previous post on here too, as well as the footprints.  The whiteboard and clock are me being functional.  The globe is our tactile attempt to help our sons understand the concept of "earth" and "the world."
The plant.  I believe every room with a window should have a live plant.  I like to think it's good for the air we breathe.
Now, if you're wondering how this is so clean and tidy, let me tell you I am a master closet-organizer and every square inch is well-used (their closet even stores the crib).  Our living room also has a fair amount of bin-storage for toys.  My main goal is always that every toy has a home that is not the ground.  It works most of the time, except for some of the bigger trucks and a large plastic parking garage (not shown).  I find that if everything has a home, our whole house stays much cleaner and things rarely ever get truly lost.
I love how the room turned out!  It is sophisticated, but comfortable for little boys.  The boys love to play in there and find it calming enough to sleep (another reason to keep as many toys out of direct site as possible).  The green bookcase, in particular, is a huge hit.
Lastly, the true confessions: 1) I actually use ugly, shallow plastic bins to store things under the boys' beds like sheets and part of their enormous car-collection.  2) There is usually a kiddie-gate over the window that opens.  The window has a lock on it and an interior screen, but I am so nervous about it that we never open it and I keep the gate over it at all times (we live a few stories off the ground surrounded by much concrete).  3) There are many more stuffed animals that lay around on beds, but who really wants to see those?  I have tried many times to "edit" the collection, but my sons always protest.
***To view all of the posts related to the creation of this room, click on "decor" in the labels collage to the left.***
And now on to the pictures:

Let me just point something out about my younger son's bed: the edge.  Since he is very young (just turned 2 last weekend) and a very active sleeper, I knew we needed something to keep him in his bed, but I didn't want to go out and buy one of those rail-things.  Instead, I discovered that a pool noodle was the exact same length of the bed (Mammut-owners take note) and I could tuck it under the sheet.  It works perfectly and only cost $2!

Boys' Room: the Drapes

My do-it-yourself experiences working on this room have been varied, but more often than not, I would not hesitate to use the word "disaster" when describing the difference between the vision in my head and what actually happened.  Thankfully the drapes look awesome, BUT they did not come without their challenges.  Here's the story of how they came to be:
The baby-theme to this room was nautical, a sort of navy blue/light blue/white sailboat thing.  I loved it.  When we moved on to big-boy-land, and the black/white thing came to be, I knew the navy blue drapes had to go.  I didn't really want to spend a fortune on new drapes, but I am not a huge fan of the cheapy standard-style drapes out there in stores like Target.  I really wanted drapes with grommets, but I couldn't find black ones anywhere.  In the end, the $12.99 pricetag for black black-out curtains won me over and I figured for that price, I could embellish.  If you have kids, you NEED black-out curtains - take my word for it.  It buys you hours and hours of extra sleep for a small price.  Anyway, these standard curtains were the kind that sort of gather as the rod goes through them.  They were supposedly the same length as the drapes that were already hanging in their room. 
I went to the fabric store and picked up some fairly standard canvas fabric in both bright blue and lime green for quite the deal and grabbed some white grossgrain ribbon for a little something extra.  I sewed stripes on the drape panels and then covered the seam where the blue and green meet with a stripe of white ribbon.  I was IN LOVE, the whole thing took me about 3 hours and I could not wait to hang them.  The next morning, I went to hang the first panel and realized they were too short!  No!  I would not fail.  I loved them too much.  So I wracked my brain for a solution.  Sew an extra panel on the bottom maybe?  Then I had it: sew tabs on the tops!  I liked that style of curtain better anyway!  The thought of sewing the tabs (sleeve-style) did not excite me but I had the great idea to get some wide black grossgrain ribbon and use that.  It turned out to be a brilliant $3.49 fix.  In one hour I was able to sew 8 tabs on each curtain (that was how many I could get out of the spool of ribbon I bought) which was the perfect amount, I hung the curtains and voila! Perfect look, perfect length.

I like how the curtains tie the colors of the room together a little bit more.  We are getting closer...I only have one more project to do: paint the little bookcase green.  I have saved this for last because I am the most nervous about the outcome.  Stay tuned...I'm not sure how long it will take me...

Boys' Room: the Dresser

Since the boys share a pretty small room, organization is constantly at war with clutter.  It drives me nuts.  So, over the last couple of months I have been working on a huge purge.  I wanted all toys to have a home, all books to have a shelf and all clothes to fit in drawers.  This purge was accelerated by my younger son's move to a big-boy bed.  At that point, I had to find space in a closet to store the crib and mattress.  We don't exactly have tons of room.  After selling the boys' small dresser, the glider (since we aren't currently rocking any babies) and some miscellaneous stuff we weren't using and then donating a bunch more stuff, our whole place feels better.  This has allowed me to do some redecoration in the boys' room.  The first and most important thing we needed was a new dresser.  I wanted something vertical that would actually fit all of their clothing with some room to spare.  I didn't have a huge budget so off to Ikea I went with my sister (we love rendezvous at Ikea, it's our hang-out).  I chose the Hopen.  I'm a fan of modern, simple furniture.  Dark stained wood is not my favorite, but it only came in one color, so I decided to work with it and chose black/white as the base of the color scheme in the room.

I wanted to do some sort of travel-theme because I found an old London Underground map to frame, but I was lacking that extra bit of inspiration - that thing to push me into action.  Then I chanced across some vinyl decals on one of those deal-a-day websites and voila! there it was, and the whole room began to come together in my head.  The decals just happened to be the right size to adhere to the front of the dresser.  Since pretty much all of the furniture in the room is from Ikea, I wanted to find some way of making it unique or at the very least, less-ubiquitous.  I am SO happy with how it turned out.  I had been having some serious crafting-fails recently (more on that later) and it felt great to have a success!  Applying these decals was amazingly easy - unbelievably easy - I tell you anyone could do it.  I would definitely do this sort of thing again.  So, the room continues to come together!

 

Budget Decor

We live in an apartment.  We are not allowed to paint or hang window treatments.  Had I known 4.5 years ago that we would still be living here, I would have probably broken the second rule, but now it seems far too late (with the two munchkins, we are fast out-growing this place).  So, I like to decorate for the holidays in ways that add at least a little something to the ugly blinds.
I happened to be at Ikea shortly after Christmas and noticed some cute little red and silver heart-shaped ornaments on clearance.  I picked up a few packages of them thinking they'd be perfect for Valentine's Day (hearts at Christmas???).
I decided to make a little garland with them over our main window in the living room.  I bought a roll of Valentine's Day ribbon that wasn't too tacky and used other ribbon I had on hand to tie the hearts on.
The whole thing cost me less than $4.00.
Moral of the story: watch those awesome post-Christmas clearance sales.  You never know what you will find and how you can re-purpose it for other holidays.