Taj's Travel / Cultural Themed Nursery

I'll start off with a pic of the nursery before we moved in.  It's a very small room, about 9 feet by 8 feet, which is why when the previous owners lived in the house, all they could squeeze in was a twin bed and a nightstand.  

The size of the room was the main challenge in creating the nursery.  Initially, when I found out that Taj (my second son) was a boy, I wasn't going to change the nursery at all, since it was all set from Nikhil's.  But, as the pregnancy continued, I really felt that urge to  nest.  Since Nikhil's nursery was put together very quickly, I didn't have time to plan things out they way I really wanted to.  This time, I was able to think things through, get inspired by other blogs and  so I ended up changing the artwork and theme of the room.

We repainted the walls a similar green, but a little less minty than the original owners and I changed the furniture layout, keeping the crib by the door so that we could peek in and see the baby. We painted right before we moved into the house and the color was chosen in like 3 seconds.  Originally, I wanted to save money and we weren't going to repaint the house before we moved in.  But, my brother-in-law convinced us that painting before we moved in was the best time to do it and would make the house really feel like "ours."  So, we literally had 2 days to choose colors for the whole house (and remember, we had just moved from Boston and sold all of our stuff in craig's list, so we had absolutely no furniture). We chose green because at the time I was pregnant with Nikhil and knew he was going to be a boy, but we knew we wanted more kids and wanted something gender neutral which would be acceptable for a girl too.   So, I had to do things backwards and find stuff that matched the wall color rather than vice versa.

 The jumping off point was the Michael Miller fabric I found for the crib sheet and crib skirt. I loved the green seersucker fabric for the bumpers (reminded me of North Carolina) with the soft minky dot fabric on the inside.  All the fabric was purchased online at fabric.com

 My talented mom made the crib bumpers.  The crib skirt and sheet were made by a woman on Etsy whose shop is now closed.  Unfortunately, right after my mom had made the bumpers, the American Academy of Pediatrics came out with their policy statement regarding the hazards of bumpers.  But, we haven't left Taj to sleep in his crib yet (he sleeps in a bassinet in our room).  So I figured it's OK for now, since we're always watching him when he's in the crib, which is no more than about 10 minutes at a time right now.  When we transition him to the crib, we will remove the bumpers.

The awesome chevron curtains were made by my mother from fabric I bought at fabric.com.  It's Annette Tatum's chevron in blue.  She stitched them with black out liner and along with the Home Depot faux white wood blinds, they make it really dark during the day, perfect for naps.

I scored the rocking chair from costco for $200.  As with all things costco, it's not always available, but we were lucky that we found it right before Nikhil was born.  I used to have the footstool in here too, but it really made the room tiny, so I removed it and it's easy enough to rock.  The other thing that we added was carpet.  It's just a remnant, cut down to the size of the room with a super thick rug pad underneath.  It's way better than the 4x 6 area rug I had in here before, which really made the room smaller.  Plus, it wasn't as cushiony soft as the carpet.

I made the wall art below.  It has his name in English, Tamil and his Chinese name as well.  I bought paint pens in coordinating colors and printed out templates and traced them onto the canvas (after I had painted it blue with some leftover house paint).  For the post about the cute plane crib mobile that my mom made, click here.  Are you sensing the theme here?  I'm not talking about the travel/cultural theme of the nursery, but the theme that my mom was super instrumental in creating this nursery!

Jessica Flannigan's nursery

I love these custom prints designed by Lisa Barbero on Etsy.  I initially saw them on Jessica's nursery which was featured on chic cheap nursery.com.  Here's a pic of her nursery.  Once I saw it, I loved it and it's funny because I didn't run across her nursery pic for her son, Bodhi, until I had finished my nursery (all except for the art), but there are some definite similarities.

Like Jeff and I, Jessica and her husband are from 2 different backgrounds (check out her site).  And, she had the brilliant idea of having Lisa do cities that were meaningful to them.  I loved the idea of Taj having something like this in his room, so I had Lisa do prints for Madras, India (where my Mom is from), Zhongshan, China (where Jeff's father is from ) Honolulu (where Jeff is from and where we live now), as well as New York, where Jeff and I met.  I left out Raleigh where I grew up, only because I couldn't really think of an iconic skyline that NC had and NYC is more meaningful to the story of Taj.

Lisa did a fantastic job on the custom prints.  She was open to feedback and changed things until we happy with the end result. I really love the Madras one.  She captured the temple and St. George's church beautifully and even made an extra copy for my mom.

Continuing on the cultural, travel theme, I used letter blocks in English and Tamil and a globe for decoration.

A huge change I made was to remove the closet doors and shell out the cash to get a closet organizing system.  It has made the biggest change in the room and creates much more space, while also being a lot more organized than before.  Click here for the pic of the way the closet looked with Nikhil.

If you are interested in knowing where I purchased anything, just drop me an email or comment, and I'll be happy to reply!

Turquoise is the new black - my refinished console

Lately, I've been loving the color turquoise.  One of my favorite stores in Honolulu is Pacific Home and they have these beautiful vintage turquoise pieces there that cost upwards of $2000.  Well, I've been on the hunt for a dresser that can serve as a console in the room that my parents use as their living room at our house.  I'll post pics of that soon.  I've found craig's list here in Hawaii is nowhere as good as it is on the mainland, but the key is to keep looking, even when you're not really looking.

I finally found this item for $50.

 All wood, dovetail construction, I saw the beauty in this piece.  Jeff was not so convinced. He saw the scuff marks, the fact that none of the drawers on the third row closed all the way and the missing hardware.  But, I saw a gem.  Originally, I was going to paint it white, but when I was talking to the very nice man, Richard, who sold it to me, he suggested an aqua blue and once he mentioned that I was sold. 

I scoured the blogosphere for tips on how to glaze furniture since I've refinished lots of pieces in my life, but have never glazed before.  I found this inspiration pic which I pinned on my pinterest board.

I emailed Julie from Less than Perfect Life of Bliss blog, and she helped me with suggestions of how to glaze.  Don't you love the color green she chose for her console? Thanks Julie!

So, originally, I went on maternity leave at 38 weeks, leaving 2 weeks to do all these awesome DIY projects.  Of course, Taj wasn't in on the plan, so he arrived just 2 days after my last day of work, which meant I didn't get to do anything before he was born.  So, my father was a huge help.  He did all the boring stuff - sanded the whole dresser, fixed the drawers so that they shut properly, cleaned all the original hardware (since I wanted to keep it) and primed it.  That left me able to do the fun stuff, paint and glaze.

Here's what I used.  The paint color is Hotel Cincinnati Abbey by Valspar.  We primed (or Dad primed) with 2 coats and then I did 2 coats of the paint.  Then I mixed in a 3:1 ratio, clear mixing glaze to stain (I was going to just eyeball it, but my dad being the retired electrical engineer that he is actually measured everything exactly).  We applied the glaze with a paint brush, left it on for about 10 minutes and then wiped it off.  We reapplied a little more in areas where we thought it was needed.



Here we are, hard at work. And, the finished result was well worth the effort.

I love how the glaze really makes the details of the dresser pop. And, since one of the drawer pulls was broken, I just moved the top center one down and bought a simple bronze, antique knob at Lowe's to replace it.

And, I'm loving the color.  I think I'm going to repaint a bunch of other furniture pieces this color.  It's turquoise, but not an in your face turquoise, which is great.

Cleanin out my closet

In the immortal words of Eminem, we are finally cleaning out our closets.

Here's the Nursery Closet before.

Kind of a hot mess as Nicey Nash would say on 'Clean House" back when we used to have cable and I would watch the show. The problem is that our nursery is really small, a little less than 8 feet x 8 feet and there is this weird niche thing on the left side of the closet making it hard to get useful storage out of all of it, which we desperately need. Plus, who really needs 2 closet bars in a nursery closet? We tried some cheap solutions, wire shelves and a little storage system, but everything just ended up getting crammed in. (You might make out some girl things in the closet, all things I bought for my niece Maya, but forgot to mail! So, if you're reading this Julie - sorry!)

So, the first thing I did was to remove the doors from the closet. That helped tremendously to open up the room. Then we had the closet system installed, and now I have more storage space than I know what to with! Add some boxes from Target, made some labels to store baby clothes by age and we're all set.

After:



And, here's the before closet of Nikhil's playroom, which is soon to be his big boy room. Again, mainly just a place for me to store my winter coats for our once a year trips to Boston.


After:


And, I really feel so much better, so much more organized, now that I have rid myself of the clutter of the closets. And, though it's only one item on my Never Ending List, it's actually on Part 1 and Part 2, so I think it counts for 2 tasks.

As for the rest of Never Ending List Part 2, this would be the list of all the things that need to get done before Baby #2 arrives.

1. Organize closets - Done

2. Create new custom name art for baby - I did these squares for Nikhil before he was born.


Actually we hadn't settled on a name for him, we were down to 2 names and we just saw what he looked like and Jeff decided he was Nikhil and so that's who he was. So I did all the different letters in both names and and created the squares for the letters that were in common between both names. When we came home from the hospital, I finished off the last 3 letters and hung them. I just bought very inexpensive fabric and binding from Walmart and cut the letters out of cardboard and painted them with leftover paint from the playroom. I wanted to make something for baby #2, but this time I think we should settle on the name because it is way too labor intensive to do this twice.

3. Hang mirror above changing table. These silhouettes that I made that are currently hanging over the changing table are also for Nikhil and the main problem is sometimes when it's very humid, the AC drips. It has damaged the Nikhil silhouette 4 times and I have re-done it 4 times.


So I'm giving up on the silhouettes there, moving to Nik's new room and figure a mirror will be easier to wipe off condensation.

4. Change the curtains - I love these gingham curtains that my Mom made, but I found this cute chevron fabric on sale, that I thought would really be fun for new curtains. The blackout liner will stay.

5. Add wooden blinds to the windows.

So, actually not too much to really do, more things I'd like to do to make the room special for baby #2. If we were having a girl, I had planned on changing everything and I don't want the space to be any less unique just because we're having another boy.

Linen Pinboard...it's my way of nesting

So, Jeff has remarked I've been very DIY lately. I think it's the nesting phase of pregnancy. I never had time when I was pregnant with Nikhil because we had just moved into our new house 6 weeks earlier. We were so overwhelmed with getting furniture for the house, since we didn't bring anything with us from Boston, we had to start from scratch. This time almost 2.5 years later, we have furniture, so now I can concentrate on the little things that drive me nuts in our space to organize it better for baby #2.

So, we had our beach time this morning, where I was able to have a nice swim, an activity which gives me a temporary reprieve from feeling so heavy and pregnant!


And, for the first time in a while, we had no obligations, so the rest of the Sunday was ours. Which meant, nap time for Nikhil and mommy and afterwards, I decided to tackle our home office.

Our home office is a mess. Which if you've seen our office at work, actually kind of parallels it. But, for some reason, it drives me more crazy here at home than at work. I guess because home is my sanctuary and for some reason, I feel like the chaos is inevitable at work.

Anyway, for a while we've had a corkboard just resting on the ground of our home office and a magnetic board resting on the top of my desk. Nikhil is always pulling stuff off the magnet board since he loves magnets, so I'm always losing important gift cards, invitations, etc. I've been meaning to hang everything for a while but I didn't like the corkboard. I was looking at pottery barn and found this nice linen pinboard, but for $149 + shipping to Hawaii = $188.10, that is way too expensive.

So, I found this blog, which detailed how to make one yourself. And, it really was that easy. Took about 30 minutes and I made it for $30!

Before- A $15 bulletin board from City Mill


After: My linen bulletin board, costing less than 1/5 of the PB version.

Now, we just have to hang it, which may take another month to do. For some reason, I have a lot of things I keep meaning to hang, but just never get around to doing. I think I'm scared of putting it in the wrong place and being stuck with unsightly nail holes. Or perhaps it's the years of living in rental apartments in New York and Boston, which has scarred me from ever nailing into walls. Whatever the reason, I'm giving myself a deadline - by the next weekend, this and the magnet board should be hung!

And, here's a preview of another project I started working on this weekend- the playroom tables and chairs, though it's taking a lot more coats of chalkboard paint than I had expected, so I'm still not done.

Yes, I'm wearing a sun hat and a respirator mask - that chalkboard paint is a bit fumey and it's not low VOC, so I wasn't taking any chances. But, not exactly my best look.

The Never Ending List, Part 1

I know everyone has one, it's just a product of not having enough time and too much to do. I think about my list all the time, especially when falling asleep and I've even dreamed about it. I have separate lists - work, house, Nikhil. Jeff says he has never dreamed about a To Do list, nor has it ever kept him up at night, but that's probably the difference between us!

With baby #2 only 12 weeks away, I have a lot to do in the next couple months. Add to that a full time job, this book I'm writing with people from Boston (not a fun, fiction book, just a book on surgery), and spending time with Nikhil, then it literally leaves 2 hours a week to get everything done. That's every working mom's problem, I guess!

Since my parents have generously volunteered to come stay with us in Hawaii for 3 months when the baby is born, there is also lots to do to prepare for their upcoming stay as well. So, the list has 3 parts - Part 1, the playroom conversion into Nikhil's room, Part 2 - changing the nursery, Part 3 - updating the guest room for my parents.

Since Nikhil will soon be moving into his big boy room to give up his nursery for his new little brother, I have to get everything organized in his new room. Currently, that room is his playroom, so at least the groundwork is there.

If you're interested, here are pics of the play room when the previous owners lived in our house. Different, huh? Somehow, it seems so much smaller because of the peach color paint and lack of a rug.

Before Before

And, here are pics of the playroom now.

Here's what I need to do in this room.

1. Add a bed - this has been ordered but shipping being what it is in Hawaii, it'll arrive maybe with one week to spare (fingers crossed).

2. Refinish/paint the little table and chairs with chalkboard paint

- These were generously gifted to me by my sis-in-law, but I've been dying to try out the new chalkboard paint and wanted to refinish them.

3. Refinish/paint blue dresser

- This was an awesome Craig's list find. I love the vintage style to it, but it has like 16 coats of paint, which are peeling, so it needs to be stripped and then primed and repainted. I also want to change out the knobs on it.

-I'm hoping my dad will help me with this, since it'll require an oil based primer, which does not come in low VOC and I don't want to use that when I'm pregnant (hint, hint, Dad if you're reading, for your first task when you come out here!)

4. Reorganize closet

-I briefly contemplated us doing it ourselves and buying stuff from Home Depot. But, once I started measuring, I realized this closet has lots of funn

y angles and lips, that make it difficult to install something pre-fab. So, this will be outsourced and we'll have a closet company come do it

5. Install art project.

-I was perusing my favorite mag, Coastal Living, when I came across this pic. I love the molding with the clipboard clips. I thought it would be a neat way to add some architectural detail to the room, while allowing me to rotate Nik's artwork. I bought 2 pieces of pre-painted 8 foot white molding from Lowe's and ordered the clipboard clips online. I had to ship the clips to my parent's house in NC b/c of course for some reason, amazon wouldn't ship the clips to Hawaii. So, I'm just waiting for the clips to arrive in the mail and I can get started on this one.

6. Install blinds for light control

-Currently, I just have some West Elm linen curtains hanging (on sale!). They're nice, but don't provide any of the shade necessary for an afternoon nap. We just bought the faux white wood blinds from Home Depot for $30 which they custom cut for you, so all we have to do is mount those and hopefully, we're done!

Source List:

On the off chance that someone other than my fam and friends is reading this and really wants to know where I got stuff in the playroom, here's a list.

-White storage cabinet/toy box - I know, it looks like Pottery Barn Kids, but I couldn't pay $1000 + the mandatory $350 flat rate shipping to Hawaii, so I actually bought all this from JC Penny. Here's the link. And, it was like 1/3 of the price, thought it took me forever to put together b/c we had left the power drill at the office to I hand screwed it, approx 100 scress.

-Navy poufs - specialty Indian boutique store, Chai Honolulu

-Blue dresser - craigs list

-Train table - Target, on sale for $50! And, it reverses to a blank white side for when the boys have outgrown trains, it can serve as a craft table

-Rug - Thomas Paul robin rug in blue, from www.spunkysprout.com. 100% wool and free shipping to Hawaii (which is HUGE!)

-Nature artwork - http://www.form-baby.com/modern-nursery-decor/

-Framed pics of baby and family - PBK, photos all courtesy of my friend, David Lau

-Baskets - on sale at JCPenny ( no longer available),

-Chalkboard labels - 4 for $2 at Ben Franklin's (beats the Pottery barn kids price of $8 each!)

-Green kid chair - gift for Nikhil's 1st birthday, PBK

-Animal growth chart, etsy.com by aluckyhorse. It's a decal, but it literally took Jeff and I 2 hours to get it up because of all the little lines and we were super anal about it being exactly right. I write the date and height on the little birdies to the left for Nikhil. I have butterflies to record baby #2's height.

Hmmm...I'd like to give myself a deadline to get this stuff done and then move on to Parts 2 and 3 of the list, but that usually doesn't happen. So, we'll just see.