Design Drool

I have been on hiatus for a while now.  So sorry.  Blogger wasn't working and every time I tried posting something, it would go ca put.  It seems to be fixed now (and speedier than ever).

Since I've been away for so long I just want to post a few things that I'm currently drooling over and then I'll be back next week.  These are kid focused, because my boys have a Birthday next month:

Wood Mobiel
Never ending options for building fun for kids. 
I think my toddler is a bit young for this right now, but it is right up his alley as he's obsessed with Lego's.  Maybe I should buy this for my husband instead; he's never gotten over his obsession with tinkering and custom building.  The other day he rigged up a system out of our laptop, microphone, and Lego's to accurately determine the speed of individual Hot Wheels cars.  (The burgandy car was the winner)

Haba Arranging Game
Haba has quality toys and their games are fun without temporary cardboard pieces.  You know that when you buy Haba, it will last forever. 
I particularly like this game because it reminds me of Tetris, but with blocks.  You can play the game or just use the blocks to build with.  It can grow with the kids' development!

Completed Nursery

The nursery has been done for a couple of months now and I am just getting to sharing the photos with you.  The growing baby must be draining my blogging capabilities!  My due date is a month from tomorrow, so that gives you the perfect amount of time to leave me feedback on the room.  Tell me what you think and feel free to ask questions.

We chose a teal color called Harbor 520F-5 (Behr), but had them paint match and used a Glidden paint in a satin finish.  The ceiling and crown molding were a Glidden eggshell finish in Stone White GLC30.  Before the curtains went up I thought the color was too bright and Nathan thought the color was too dark, but I think the colorful curtains pulled it all together.

It took me a few hours to make the curtains from the fabric I ordered from my previous color board here.  After I put the curtains up, I decided they were a tad bit long, so I ended up re-hemming them for another hour.  I'm quite pleased with the result.  It's a quality fabric that, with the light blocking blinds, will keep the room nice and dark as needed.

I used and old canvas to do the graphic painting hanging over the white chair.  I painted it by layering about 5 colors of dotted paint to cover the canvas completely.  The paints were leftover from college; I can't believe they weren't completely dried out.  The painting is nothing spectacular, but it does that job and is a definite improvement over the previous painting.

I actually won the white chair at Chicago's Neocon a few years ago.  It was, also, in Logan's nursery once upon a time.

The top owl print was a holdover from Logan's nursery in the old house that I found on Etsy a few years ago.  The lower print was something I created and printed.

We picked up the plush Tigger at our trip to Disney in April and I decided it would make a cute addition to the crib pre-baby.  I had extra fabric from the curtains and made a quick pillow with leftover stuffing from a previous project.  Both of these items will be removed from the crib when the baby starts to use it, but they are cute for now!

I folded about 25 origami cranes in varying shades of blue and green to create the mobile hanging over the changing table.  Kite string was used to hang the cranes from a Manzanita branch.

We decided to hang a light from West Elm over the Eames rocker.  I purchased picture ledges to store a small collection of children's books in a front-facing library of sorts.  Logan likes to browse the books in this room as his aren't represented in such a pretty fashion.

Happy Bungalow

Elephants on Parade

I have a talented friend that has recently started up an Etsy shop called Happy Bungalow.  He makes an assortment of wood crafts that are for sale at his shop and many are kid friendly and durable for little kids.  He will be adding new merchandise on a regular basis, so don't forget to check it out often.  I think hand crafted items are the perfect gift for Christmas because individual attention and love has gone into making them!

Dollhouse Bookends

On Safari

He has a few different locations where you can browse his goods or keep updated on the latest Happy Bungalow news:

etsy shop:  www.etsy.com/shop/happybungalow

website:  www.happybungalow.com

facebook:  www.facebook.com/HappyBungalow

twitter:  twitter.com/#!/@AHappyBungalow

flickr:  www.flickr.com/photos/happybungalow/

Library Full of Books

I have been yearning to have a library my entire life and when we bought our new house I knew that this Sitting Room off of our bedroom would do the trick.

Before Photo

Before Photo

Before Photo

My husband and I borrowed my In-laws mini-van over the weekend and headed to our "local" Ikea (actually 1 1/2 hours away) in search of Expedit storage systems.  After writing down all of the locations of the various units we wanted, we headed down to the warehouse and began loading up our cart full of very heavy boxes.  Then disaster struck.  Ikea was completely out of the 5x5 Expedit system in white.  I had my heart set on the white for our library and after a few tears (pregnancy hormones for sure) I decided that the birch option would work just fine.  I think that it was just a shock to my pregnant self that they didn't have what I wanted and I just needed to sit on the idea of something different and let it sink in for a few minutes before really making up my mind.  By thoughtful (and rational) husband even offered to drive up again to by the white unit when it is back in stock, but, tearful as I was, I realized that was a silly thing to make him do.  The birch unit went right on our cart and away we went.

Alphabetizing like crazy!

It's a tree house, not a fort!

We put the unit together the next day while our son napped and were pleased that it didn't really take that long.  Next came the fun part for me.  We pulled all of my many boxes of books out of storage and I began alphabetizing them.

Logan liked making a "tree house" out of the newly emptied boxes.  I have no idea why he insisted it was a tree house and not a fort.  Look below for the finished room...

I'm really happy with the final result.  I can already tell that I need to evaluate the size of my book collection as there is no room for growth at this point, but I'll worry about that later!  We stacked two units for a higher bookcase and anchored the unit to the wall for safety.  Logan has already added a few of his books to the library which I think is super adorable.