Posts Tagged ‘at home’
in the words of burt bacharach “i’m wishin’ and hopin’ and plannin’ and dreamin’” for all of this pretty stuff! here’s what’s on my wishlist this month:
let’s ease into this gently, no billion dollar rugs this month (i’m not sure that rug was a billion dollars, but i didn’t want to look!) isn’t this sewing kit from modcloth sweet? i would buy it for the tin alone (if i didn’t already have 16,000 or so spools of inherited cotton). i feel like it could have been made just for me. its so perfect, with its mod-ish flowers and cheery gingham base! makes me want to thriftily repair things and make charming patchworks and wear gunne sax style frocks. but that sounds mighty time- consuming so maybe i’ll just not.
color it yerself you lazy slug! ooh with pleasure! this scandinavian inspired screen printed poster by summerville comes black and white and ready for your colorful interpretations. there are simply not enough occasions for coloring in adult life. too much form filling in, not enough coloring. i love the style of this poster. it is so my thing and it even looks a bit like my hand drawn style (you may not be surprised to learn i like drawing flowers. if you are surprised, hi i’m pilgrim an i’m a floral-a-holic). but back to this poster, wouldn’t it be a great present for a housewarming if you weren’t sure of their decor? they can color it to match whatever they like! genius.
more flowers (see i told you i liked them!) as seen on plasticland. i actually already have some measuring cups similar to this, but they’re (extremely awesome) love hearts, so alas there is no room in my life (or drawer) for flower-shaped scoops, but a girl can look, right?! ah… flower cooling racks. perfect for cooling a fresh batch of ‘lazy daisy’ chocolate cookies. i have no idea why they’re called lazy daisies, but they’re really yummy, quick and easy chocolate cookies. seriously, i was making them when i was seven years old. these are eeeeeeeasy cookies, people! leave a comment if you want the recipe.
have you seen this wallpaper before? when i first saw it i actually went slack-jawed and speechless for a while. there i was tripping through the internet daisies then bam! hazz-aa-waaaaa-paaa waaal-paaa… i think my boyfriend was moments away from calling a doctor when i stopped drooling and regained my faculties and pointed out just how incredible this jonathan adler wallpaper is. the blue and green one needs to come and live in my bathroom. want! oh jonathan adler, your products make me happy. why am i cursed to only rent my dream home, its like i love the house but it just wants to stay friends and not let me wallpaper it. that analogy works, right?
last of all is this slice of awesome: a 1973 ikea catalogue as seen on the retro! blog (yes i know its in swedish, but the swedes have all the good pictures of stuff). it hadn’t actually occurred to me that there might be ikea catalogues from the past. ikea in my mind is just very now and though i know it’s old, i just assumed it was much smaller and not-cataloged. but this discovery has lead to a dangerous new ebay saved search! oh for a time machine…
what about you? what are you pining for this month, and would you like to borrow my time machine to visit 1973 ikea?
this isn’t really late breaking news, but its taken me aaaages to get around to posting about the changes i made to my son’s room. its no secret that’s for sure! if you’ve seen my apartment therapy home tour shots you’ll be familiar with all of this already, but oh sweet lordy do i love talking about makeovers! can we get a before…?
nothing intrinsically wrong with that ‘before’ pic. it was a very nice calm and minimal babies room. i went with an aqua, lime, and orange palette largely inspired by the rug you see. the changing table was the same that i was changed on when i was a baby, and it was made by my great grandfather during the depression (from orange crates). don’t worry the cabinet has been moved into another room where it will take on its seventh life as a guitar bench. and there’s the wee little guy, back in the day, i think that was taken when he was one year old. and what about the ‘after’ shot…?
TA-DA! there is a sideboard where the cot was! and a bed where the change table was! and a bunch of different stuff! working from left to right we have: ikea storage ‘bins’ holding toys and supplies (painted in nippon paints ‘bamboo’ color), a second hand sideboard scored from my friend’s shop (the top was pretty rough so it got a lick of paint ‘satsuma’ by nippon paint, to be precise), the print on the wall above the sideboard is by shinzi katoh, and the smaller print on the wall is ‘gama go’s critter boat’ by tim biskup.
the bed was actually the first thing i bought. i found it in a thrift store and thought it was such a sweet, perfect ‘first bed’. from that point i put the room together really gradually. i had a folder on my desktop and a photoshop file that i used as a digital mood board. i took photos of what we already had (the prints, the clock, the chair) and then worked out a palette and ‘theme’ (i was inspired by the yellowing colorful illustrations in vintage kid’s encyclopedias) and then added the other furniture as i discovered it. i would search very generally on etsy and ebay for extras using very general terms that fit my theme, eg “vintage woodland” and if i found something intriguing i’d drag the pictures into my mood board to see if they worked. it was just trial and error and patience. but i enjoy putting rooms together so much, and this was such a special project. i adored my bedrooms, growing up, and i wanted this extra special first ‘big kid’ room to be as fun and cute as it was functional. storage was an extra special consideration seeing as previously all the toys had lived in our lounge room!
here’s a view of the million dollar rug! its not really that valuable, i bought it from urban outfitters and it arrived a very different color to the one online so i spent about its equal value just getting it to be the color i wanted! ugh.
so after i worked out i was going for a vintage woodland, nature, kinda theme i could. not. believe it when i found this sheet on etsy! its a smokey the bear single sheet, in great condition, that i’ve turned into a duvet cover. its got that lovely soft vintage sheet feeling, but i sewed it to a new plain white sheet to give it some extra thickness . i still can’t believe my luck! my son loves pointing out the animals on the sheet and reading all the fire safety messages. the cushions are ‘orla kiely for target’ napkins set i picked up on ebay.
here is one of my woodland patchwork prints in its natural habitat! now you know what informed my choice of colors for that print… its all about me, baby! also pictured is a leaf print by ubiki, from etsy.
the sideboard was a real score. my friend was closing down her shop to set off on a world adventure, and so i kindly offered to relieve her of her shop counter, and here it is! a freshly painted top, and a new lease on life. it now holds lots of boxes of smaller toys and games in its shelves, and some smaller clothing items in its drawers.
some woodland-ish trinkets my son corralled into his room. funny how little people take ownership of certain things. he’s just claimed my whisk as his own recently!
the bedtime story chair has a very new and lovely cushion on it from arthur’s circus! the chair and the bed frame are both painted in nippon paint’s ‘wainscot’ color. its a nice, very 70s brown. the chair was one of my grandma’s kitchen chairs, so its really cool it gets such an important role in this room.
can you believe i found some squirrel bookends at my local housewares/gifty shop.. these babies are keeping us safe from a total book-alanche. we have an avid story-listener on our hands!
and finally, on the wall at the foot of the bed, by the doorway, we have a little cluster of art wall goodness. the dreamy lab partners prints (and the matte stephens’ bear monster) frame the ‘moon in my room’ light. father christmas brought my son the moon last december and so every night we check out what phase the moon is in, and adjust the light accordingly. it makes a really pretty nightlight and educational tool.
as i mentioned, a lot of the things we already had around the house, and the other furniture brought in is half ikea, half second hand so i’m quite happy with the thriftiness vs practicalness balance.
so there we have it! from nursery to nearly four years old! my son loves his room and even after a couple of months of it being all set up he’s still thrilled to have a room of his own, with character and interest, and that’s the big triumph for me.
