Recently in decorating Category

Moving foward

By Autumn on January 2, 2012 2:41 PM | Talk to me

Many of the blogs I read had great reflective posts about 2011 and maybe I can do something like that too...when I have some free time. But today isn't that day. We took advantage of the long weekend to try to get some things done around the house. Part of my purge, reorganize, and winter stir crazy urge to make things a bit more neat.

This means another shelf in the hall to act as a pantry. This freed up cabinet space for many of our kitchen gadgets, which freed up counter space.

All this inspired by our new mixer which Jason made the most delicious bread to date with and is in the process of making chocolate mousse.

The influx of more toys led to us using some of the children's Christmas gift money to buy them another shelving unit. It also makes it so River can get his board games while Sage can not. His board games used to live atop the bookshelf (twice the height of this one) where we all would forget about them.

Even with all this new found ability to have everything live its place--it does not deter the one year old. She has entered the phase of spilling crap out of the floor just to spill crap out on the floor. Not to play. Just to mess and it drives me fucking insane. I had to curse here to stress how insane. A mess makes my brain feel messy. I feel like screaming if the mess reaches a certain stage of chaos. I think it would have been neater to get the baby a kennel. Also cheaper. Does Ikea take returns?

During the summer I am not half so crazy because we are so often not inside and the mess is not all in my face being messy. Damn you, winter. Even though you've been kind so far. Still.......

After going back and forth on Sage getting her own room or not, we finally settled on the children sharing a room. While I love the idea of them sharing--it isn't as if my kids stay in their own beds all night anyway. So while we have pipe dreams of sharing a room keeping them in their room and out of ours--I somehow feel that won't magically happen.

I still lean towards wanting Sage to take the guest room so we can spread out the kid-stuff between two bedrooms and I can buy cute bedding and other decorations. I might just go and buy the cute bedding anyway. Who says guests can't enjoy sleeping under adorable woodland creatures?

If we stay here long enough Sage might want her own room or be forced to have her own room when/if another child comes along. Whatever that purple room will eventually become, in my mind, it always had the potential to be Sage's since I found out she was the owner of a vagina and not another set of testicles I had to wipe poop off of (Don't miss that. Don't miss that AT ALL).

For now the kids are sharing. This means her dresser is now living in ~~River's~~ River's and Sage's room and her crib converted to a toddler bed, is also on its way in there. Sadly, this also means the large, bulky train table that Sage uses as her personal jungle gym must remain in our living room. I had indulgent fantasies of it hiding out in River's room neatly set up with train tracks that a certain little sister might not so readily destroy (just for the joy of making a mess *scream*)

We made it work though, as the pictures show. River is excited. Sage is exited. The pair of name decorations are adorable. And the tiny flower frames will soon hold hand prints from Sage--just as River has his hand prints over his bed. I made the head of her bed face the opposite way of his so they can look over and see each other.

The parent room looks strangely bare without all the baby furniture in it. It also looks a horrid mess. That's for tomorrow. As for finishing painting the hall and tackling the war zone that is the guest room--next weekend.

Welcome 2012 to a reorganized (almost) home.

Keeping busy

By Autumn on February 16, 2010 11:14 AM | 3 Comments

I've been keeping busy over the last few days. On Saturday Jason and I took advantage of the sales and our tax return to buy a new bed. Not only was our old bed old and bent, uncomfortable and dented but it was only a Full. Fine for tiny me, not so fine for the longer Jason or the growing toddler taking up more and more room in the middle. We bought a King and I can't wait to lay my pregnant self in that monster.

oops, blurry. Anyway, you can see the new color and the spot our new bed will go!

Since the bed is being delivered today, I had to get to painting. The old bed got moved into the guest room/office and I spent nearly all of yesterday morning painting the master bedroom and listening to the radio on my brand new ipod-- a Valentine's gift from Jason.

Let me just explain, we don't buy each other gifts. So it was shocking and guilt inducing because the only thing I bought him lately was a new wooden spoon to replace the old one I destroyed since he complains about it at every opportunity he can. Valentine Day's fail on my part. Big time.

I also picked up some cheapo colored frames for River's room and hung up some of his masterpieces and our handprints. A couple other frames finally housed some prints that have been sitting around for six months or so. Sales at Target found us with a new comforter for only $23. I think I am about done with my home improvements for awhile. Though the break can't be too long. My belly keeps growing and spring will be here before we know it. Not only do I not want to be lugging things and balencing on step ladder during my second trimester, I also want to be outside enjoying my favorite season.

Operation Get-Shit-Done-Before-The-Bean-Arrives is going rather well.

I am a day shy of a full eleven weeks. On Thursday I have my second appointment. The one is which I interrogate the nurse who is supposed to fill me in on the policies of the hospital where I may or may not force a newborn out of my vagina.

Overall, I feel pretty damn good most of the time. I don't nap every day anymore. This pregnancy is (thus far) so so much easier than my first one.

Now I just need to build that damn bookshelf, clean out the closet in the office, and begin my balcony garden...

River's room make-over--part 1

By Autumn on November 3, 2009 9:50 AM | Talk to me

A sale on Olympic paint at Lowe's kicked off my decorating work before I planned to start. See, the rough plan was to start this project two or three evenings before River's birthday once he was in bed asleep. The great room reveal would happen on his second birthday with his gifts waiting for him in the center of the room.

Welcome to your big boy room. Now get out of ours. :) Oh, and by the way, Happy Birthday son!

Only there was a sale...on Olympic paint (one of the more expensive paints you can buy because it is VOC free. Meaning it doesn't make you ditzy/high when you paint with it and hardly has an odor). Once the paint was in hand, I couldn't NOT paint.

I am the type of person that barrels into projects like an enraged bull. I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop doing it. I forget to eat. I work myself to blisters and sore muscles and sweat slicked skin. I must get it done!

I began painting on Saturday with a coat of primer to cover the ugly blue left up in River's room by previous tenants. I didn't even know blue could be ugly. I mean, it's blue. It's the least offensive color out there. Almost every shade of blue is lovely...except this one. It looked better with primer, splotched and splattered, than that blue.

I worked solo--one brush, one roller, one step ladder for my midgety legs. I think it took me two hours, maybe more and this was after shopping all morning solo with a toddler in tow. You think one is harder than the other? No, way. Both are a work out.

Olympic primer is watery. I had that paint all up and down my person: in my hair, on my glasses, dotted up and down my arms. My shopping experience at Target involved the following, "Still down on your bottom! You're going to fall our of the cart and get a big boo boo! Don't touch that! Come back here!" At least with the paint, I could focus on the task at hand.

Sunday I put up the actual paint. Now we ditched our idea to use a green grape color and go with something less jarring instead. Something that allows up to add a rainbow hue of colors into the room without it looking like a acid trip in there. So we, ironically, chose River Reed-- a soothing green color. Only, the woman at Lowes circled that choice, printed out the label for that choice, and thought she gave me my choice but she didn't. She gave me the color before that which was more like white with the merest tint of green thrown in. So the quirkiness of painting my son's room a color with his exact name--failed. Still, I like the mistake color a lot. A lot more than running back to Lowes, even though I was pretty sure I would not get lost again.

See, our GPS broke and somewhere in our moving process, I misplaced our brand spanking new 3 year warranty. So now we rely on Goggle Maps to get us around Baltimore. Which is good for my memory. I learn a lot more that way, but bad when Goggle Maps adds FOUR turns that do not exist to get me home. Not one, or two, or three but FOUR. FOUR TURNS that DO NOT need to be turned. Yeah, I figured it out eventually after multiple WRONG TURNS and some WASTED GAS.

Let's just get to the point of this entire post before I ramble you into a nose bleed.

So you see? Do you see what I did all by myself? This is River's reading corner. I have to order a sling bookshelf for the wall under the window. It you haven't seen one. It looks like this:

I'll be putting his weekly library books in here for easy access and viewing.

New purchases include, the curtains, the toy chest, and the three cloth bins to hold his cardboard books. All brought to you by Target and my husband's hard earned money.

As River would say, "Tada!"

Here it is as a close up. I am proud to say he has pulled books off this shelf, ploped down in the bean bag chair as intended and "read".

This is River's writing corner when one day I trust him to only write on paper and not on the walls, furniture and his own face.

Toy shelf! Because we are poor as hell do not have limitless spending money, I gave River our two bookselves. One was picked off a lawn when college got out and the students left their furniture behind. The other was mine when I still lived with my mother.

It took many trips to haul all the books off these shelves and into my office. We have plans, when funds allow, to build a huge entire wall bookshelf for our books. For now, they are homeless and weeping on the floor.

See that empty corner? River's bed will go there. His converted crib to toddler bed until we get around to buying a mattress for the twin bed frame my mother has waiting for us to take up in New York.

Oh, and those face plates. Yes, the other tenants were lazy a-holes who painted over all the faceplates causing all but one of the electrical sockets to not work. We didn't not get around to buying new face plates yet, so these will have to remain until we do.

The only other things this room needs is a stuffed animal holder (Getting ours from Ikea for $4.99) and some art on the walls. A slow process but I took care of a great deal of it this weekend!

Upcoming projects

By Autumn on September 14, 2009 12:34 PM | 3 Comments

We have a few upcoming projects. The next is the building of two bookcases. One on the wall between our dinning and living room spaces. The second will be built into the office closet in place of doors. Thus it needs to be movable, maybe hinged, to allow entrence into the office closet. We will then be able to unpack serveral boxes of books and use our storage space for other things. I'm not sure what we will do with these bookcases--stain, paint, or leave them as raw wood.

We'll be going to Home Depot to get a wood quote. The estimated price will really determine when we get around to building them.

Our second project is River's bedroom/playroom. As part of his second birthday gift, I'd like to organize and improve his space. Right now the room is an intense, overwhelming shade of blue left here by the previous tennants. We've already picked out a green grape color to paint the walls.

His toys lay scattered on the floor as we have no bins or a toy chest for anything. That will have to change. He also needs his own bookcase and one of those stuffed animal holders that hangs from the ceiling.

I'd like to invest in a big boy bed. He might not use it for awhile, but he won't fit in the crib converted into a toddler's bed forever either. This will probably be something that will have to wait. I have, of course, already picked out bedding for his new room decor.

Jason and I are are not into sports or trucks or any overtly "male" interests. Monsters though... Well, monsters are boyish enough for my son but not over done like baseball or fire engines.

Target stocks this cute bedding.

Something similar is available at garnethill.com.

The next step is to figure out what color curtains will work with green grape colored walls? I thought a dark blue? Any suggestions?

I really want River to have his own space before we even get around to having another child. Somewhere that can be just his. Once I am pregnant again, all projects will be on hold when my free time will be used for things like puking in the toilet or laying on the floor feeling like I could sleep for ten hours straight.

Other things that would help neaten up River's space are toy bins/toy chests. Target and Walmart sell decently priced items that look something like this:

I love planning. I love decorating. I love making a space unique and attractive but funds only allow us to tackle one thing at a time and other things take priority like new shoes for the toddler with feet of immense size and new pants for his mother--who only has three to her name and two are a bit tight and one is way to large.

We'll get to it all, eventually.

Pretty, pretty

By Autumn on September 10, 2009 9:40 AM | Talk to me

I must have issues. Major enviromental issues. Not only am I neurotic about cleaning, but I love being surronded by pretty. I am not only addicted to Etsy but to Ikea. Can someone just let me take whatever I want from Ikea? Can I live there part time, maybe? Please?

Why I want to make sweet love to Ikea:

Ikea has cheap frames. Amazingly cheap. Amazing beautiful.

Look! Look! I finally have an office where I can write in peace. A pretty, pretty office space. *Swoon*

Magic will be happening here.

Month Twenty One

By Autumn on September 8, 2009 9:17 PM | Talk to me

Dear River,

This Wednesday you will have completed your twenty first month of life. When I carry you, you don't really fit right on my hip anymore. Your long legs dangle, you head butts my chin, and your weight pulls at my arms. It makes me think of a photo of my mother nursing me. This little woman with this huge baby across her narrow lap. Now that is me. I was hugely pregnant with you and now I am again dwarfed by your size. When I put your foot into my hand it nearly fills that entire length. River, I can distinctly recall how the length of your entire pinky finger was as long as the small length of that same finger on me. Just the tip to that first joint. My hand could cup your entire skull. I could hold you with one arm. You are so big, so full on energy and independence, passions and fire.

So big!

Today you were so angry. So spitting, crazy angry that you kicked the wall. Battered it with your bare feet and then slapped it with your hands. Your tantrums are extreme. I feel those same doubts that riddle parenthood for every mother and father. Is it okay that you get so angry? Am I doing something wrong? Is there something else I should be doing? Sometimes I try to rub your brow, to hold you. Your whole body writhes. You protest. I end up leaving you there on the floor, walking away, letting you scream out your fury. You always come back from it. Set it aside. Rarely hold a grudge very long. Sometimes I am proud of your passion. I think it stems from confidence, from a strong sense of self and personality. I hope you feel as strongly about all things in life--your loves, your goals, your adventures. Just try not to keep kicking the walls. Eventually, you will be strong enough to bust holes in them.

Who could believe it of you?

You talk consistently. There isn't anything you won't repeat and you find ways to put words together to express yourself-- forming whole strings of ridiculous sentences. This month you have finally taken to including yourself in these sentences. "Baby" you call yourself. Or "River". "Baby walk! Baby push! Baby water!" Or you pause in pushing your stroller outside, solemnly, to proclaim. "Daddy's boots. River's shoes. Mommy's sandals." You wait for us all to agree. Yes, those are Daddy's boots, River's shoes and Mommy's sandals. Only then, can we move on. Each time we pass the motorcycles, you must proclaim "motorcycles." "motorcycles" a billion times. I realized that is your emphasis. Your way of saying, "I really like those motorcycles. I love their color. I want to touch them." You don't have the adjectives. You only have the noun to stress, to say over and over.

This was my rocking horse long ago.

You talk so much now, I can't even think of what to write here. Every day is new words, new phrases, things popping out of your mouth I had no idea you could say or even understand. "BATMAN!," you shout. "Daddy more ice cream now please" "Mommy pee. River potty. Diaper off. Toilet paper. Shhhh" You say as you sit on your potty while I sit on my potty. My favorite recent development is how you started calling frozen blueberries (which you could say just fine) "BerryJam" which is your flip-flopped version of the children's book titled, Jamberry.

You've driven a boat and I never have! Not fair!

This month we were lucky to spend a week in New York visiting family and friends. Your language explosion really began while we were there. For the first time you had a name for my father. "Poppy" you decided. "Bryan," for my brother, "Grandma Me" for my Grandmother, Marie.

Grandma time

A visit from Grandma Me

You don't need me as much as you once did. In fact, you prefer not to have me around sometimes. You favor new company to my own and often your father over me. I'm happy for you. Happy for your independence. At some point you always demand my attention. At night, you still cry only for me. When you are sick, you want your mother. You might be growing apart from me, realizing you are your own little person, but I am content knowing that I will always be your safe ground--your home base. I'll hold you in my arms as long as I can, until my back aches and your feet knock into my knees. As you continue to drawf me, know you'll always be my baby. Always.

Love,

Mommy

Ikea, another bane of my existence

By Autumn on August 31, 2009 8:36 PM | 1 Comment

I know a woman or two who tends to pant like a bitch in heat at the sound of the word "Ikea". I can't claim to pant, to ogle, to claim Ikea would make the perfect boyfriend-but I do day dream about their lovely, affordable furniture. I had never even been in an Ikea until our move to Baltimore. Sweet Ikea, and their Memorial day sale provided us with living room furniture. Sweet Ikea had me laying down under a cardboard box for the twenty minute ride home. I spent that claustrophobic moment flipping through their cataloge.

It seems Ikea and I may meet again very soon. You see, we need some kind of window covers. The blinds in our room are horrible, old, broken and falling to pieces. Not only do I have to roll them up by hand, but I have to keep them up by sticking the rolled blinds into a loop I made out of the string that should move them up and down when pulled--but does not. They were here when we moved in and due to funds and prioroties, have yet to be replaced.

Ikea sells lovely blackout blinds. While staying in the country at my mother's River slept through the entire night and didn't bother me until 7:00 in the morning. Here, with street lamps glowing into our room around the blinds, he wakes up 4-5 times a night and has gotten up around 5:30/6:00 most mornings.

We can't travel twenty minutes just for blinds. Not when there are so many other things at Ikea that are begging me to take them home. Shouldn't the windows have curtains? Every window should be so lucky. How about these $4.99 per window additions?

Our apartment is much darker than our last one. I love natural light. I don't want anything dark or heavy around the windows. These sheer, white curtains should brighten up the rooms! Oh, and they are so CHEAP! Perfect!

Although, I like these ones for the bedroom. But black? I don't think black will really go with the paint color we picked out for our room. Change the paint color or get the white curtains? Hm.

There are many, many other curtains I love--but they are more expensive. Not sure if we can or should slap down too much money on something a simple as curtains. We still, after all, have to by the rods to hang the curtains.

Ikea also makes these great panel curtains. We happen to have a set of slidding glass doors onto our deck and I just happen to have fallen in lust with these.

Oh, crap and their are these strips of frivolous spending... I'd love to slap down the ridiculous amounts of cash they cost to hang them up in my living room. This won't be happening, but one can daydream.

I really need to reign myself in though. I have been bitching pinning for months that I need a in the office so I have a space to work on my writing. I've planned to buy the cheapest possible desk in existence and a cheap chair...from Ikea...of course!

Feeling loved

By Autumn on August 27, 2009 12:43 PM | Talk to me

My dear friend Heather sent me this print a couple of week's ago.

by paintallnightstudios

When I opened it not only did I feel that tear pinch at the corners of my eyes that comes about when someone does something loving for me that is entierly unexpected, but I also heard that voice that pips up now and then and proclaims, "Holy, f-ing, shit...I'm a mother!"

With fall on it's way I think of going back to school. I feel that ghost memory of new clothes and notebooks, of new rooms and teachers. In a few years my boy, my baby, will be going to kindergarten. He'll be doing all those things I've already done, starting over, fresh and new.

I feel overwhelmed by how I got here--to this place. To this position of parenting where my heart is tied up in knots over my son. Every single moment with him is divinity.

God is the moments we spend loving each other, isn't it?

Things that make me happy

By Autumn on August 25, 2009 12:06 PM | 2 Comments

I've always known I've enjoyed cleaning more than the average individual and that having a tidy space is essential to my mental well being. I thought I got this from my parents who kept a clean house. Even divorced, they each keep a very neat, tidy place or their own. Yet, after a week+ of living back in my hometown, I began to get twitchy over the merest hint of CRUMBS or DUST or CLUTTER or WATER SPOTS ON THE SINK or RING IN THE TOILET BOWL.

I mean so twitchy I got excited at the thought of scrubbing my mother's house top to bottom and went hunting for implements of scrubbing. I did not find what I wanted and went to mixing vinegar and water in a glass. I rubbed this all over her counters and then dusted the entire kitchen area before I realized I was borderline insane. Who cleans when they don't have to? Who cleans someone else's house?

A MAID WHO GETS PAID!

The reality is--I am far more clean-centric than my parents. It was almost like that point in my life when I realized my parents were like every other human being and capable of making mistakes. Noooooooooooo!

The neurosis must skip a generation. Not only is my middle name a shout of to my maternal grandmother, but also the strands of DNA that make me love to scrub the tiles in the shower with my brand new brush.

I have been waiting for a brush like this for some time. I've always hated scrubbing the bathtub with a passion. It's awkward and time consuming. Yet, this lovely adjustable brush makes it all very easy. If I work hard enough, my bathtub might glimmer like my Grandmother's. Though I doubt it, I'm just not willing to become that neurotic that I clean my bathtub every single time it is used. I do very much so admire her skills though.

I'm also into planning. If my father comes to visit and if we have the money (both pretty big ifs) I want to have him build a bookshelf to fit this section of our wall.

As you can see the books need somewhere to go and there are about a billion or so, give or take a few hundred thousand, cardboard boxes of books in our guest bedroom closet. These small bookshelves will then be free to go in River's room and house his growing library.

I am also ready to get the cheapest desk and chair from Ikea just to have somewhere to house my laptop in our guest room. This will also be my office. Hopefully with a door between the toddler and I (while Daddy is home) I will get more writing work done each day.

the spot my desk will go....*lusty sigh*

I have only 3-4 more rooms to paint. These are the colors I had picked out for what remains. ie: the sections with writing on them.

Left: River's Room

Right: Master Bedroom

Right:The hall

But now I have free paint from a friend of mine. A lovely deep, earthy orange that reminds me of pumpkin pie. I was considering painting over the orange accent wall in my dinning room that people either hate or love. But I think we need the brighter orange in here since our home doesn't get much natural light. So perhapes I will paint our master bathroom orange? But that orange won't really go well with the color of the bedroom.

This will take pondering...

Etsy drain...

By Autumn on August 11, 2009 8:00 AM | Talk to me

Lately all my free time has been caught up in housework and reading. I try not to use all River's nap time "working" because I need a break. So I've been breaking up my "projects" into smaller sections. What I mean by all this is...painting. I ran out of paint for a couple rooms and left them unfinished for far too long. Now I am nearly done with the painted rooms and only have part of the hall, River's room and our bedroom to paint...another time...maybe over the winter.

I've also been shopping at etsy.com. I am usually pretty good. I mean, the only reason I even went back there was to find a birthday present for my mom and then I had to go back to see if things had shipped yet and leave reviews for things I had received.

On one of these productive trips, I pondered looking around at orange colored prints solely for the purpose of balancing out the orange color of the dinning room accent wall with an orange print across from it. I usually just favorite things I like and turn away.

But there was a sale! A buy-one-get-one-free-with-free-shipping-sale. I couldn't pass that up. Plus, I had just gotten paid for a story so the money was just sitting there in my paypal account.