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!

Kids Art Display

This is a quick post on a simple little project I did to display Nikhil's art.  All the projects I choose to do have to be things that can be done easily with a newborn.  I would love to do more detailed projects, but somehow there's just never enough time.  And, as I gear back up to return to work in 3 short week (where did the time go?).  I have to prioritize.

I was inspired by this pic in Coastal Living.  I love this room. and it's funny because it has the same colors as Nikhil's room, though I guess there's nothing really crazy about turquoise and white.  I've seen the clothes pins on fishing line idea for displaying art, but I liked the fact that this didn't use fishing line or string or something that I'm always worried can be a choking hazard for little boys.

So, I bought the metal clips on amazon and there was only one size that would ship to Hawaii.  Turned out they were way too big and way too hard to open and close.

So, then I decided to use clothes pins, a little Modge Podge and Japanese paper I bought at Ben Franklin.

I cut out strips of the paper the size of the clothes pins and Modge Podged them on.  You can also remove the springs and paint the entire pin white, but I was too lazy.

Then, I bought 2 pieces of 8 foot white molding at Home Depot.  I think each piece was $10-$12 and had them cut it in half, for 4 pieces.  I glued the clothes pins with gorilla glue to the molding and let it set for an hour.  I think that was the hardest part since gorilla glue takes a while to completely dry and I don't really have a space in my house for such long boards, I kept accidentally moving the pins.  Then, just use a nail gun to attach the molding to the wall.  At some point I'll go back in and use a little wood filler and paint to cover the nail holes, but for right now, I'm too lazy.

And, here's the finished product.  A rotating canvas for our budding Picasso.

It's a Blue Christmas

It's a blue Christmas - not because we're sad, but because this is the year of  blue for us.  Blue car, blue dresser, and now a blue tree. Maybe it all started with Thomas the train and my son's love of the color blue.  Though, our house is also very blue/brown as well, and I can't credit Nikhil with that one.  I usually do red/gold ornaments for our Christmas tree, but I was at Walmart the other day and saw these "shatterproof" ornaments, so I decided to try them out.  They had these beautiful turquoise colored ones, so of course, I had to get those.  And, let me tell you, shatterproof is the only way to go with a 2 year old boy.

The ornaments did live up to their name and at $5 for 12, they are a good deal.  Every year, we are always cleaning up shards of cheap glass from ornaments that have accidentally fallen off the tree and this year, we've been lucky with the new ornaments.

 

In addition to the tree, I saw this DIY Christmas ornament tutorial on younghouse love's website from their Pinterest challenge.  The step by step instructions are here (with a video tutorial).  I thought it would be a neat thing to do with my son, since he really loves arts and crafts.  We added a bunch of different colors to each ornament to make it more fun.  My niece, Bella, was visiting, so we did some more ornaments together.  I found the plain glass ornaments at Ben Franklin and had a bunch of acrylic Folk art paints from other projects.  

Aren't they pretty?  I love the swirls.  Merry Christmas everyone!

DIY Airplane Crib Mobile

For Taj's nursery, I already had this cute crib mobile my dad had bought for Nikhil, but I wanted something a little different.  I was googling mobile ideas and found the following pic:

However, this retails for $130 - yup, over $100 for a mobile!  It doesn't sing, dance or anything else other than look very cute, which it is, but no way would I spend that much.  And, then I remembered that I have an awesomely talented Mom who is like a crochet and knitting genius.

So, I googled around some more and found a cute free pattern here for an airplane crib mobile.  I decided on planes because I'm doing a very loosely based travel/cultural theme for Taj's nursery.  The big nursery reveal is coming soon.  But, for now, just the mobile.  We made one small tweak to the pattern.  I bought these music buttons for $1.69 at Jo-Ann Fabrics (and yes, they actually ship to Hawaii, though it takes 2 weeks).

So, my mom glued these little buttons into each airplane.  She made them with yarn which coordinated with my crib sheets (from Nikhil).


And, here is the final result!

Nikhil loved it so much that when he saw the planes before they were attached to the embroidery hoop, he took them to his own room and hid them in his bed.  It took us forever to find them.  Mom was going to knit more, but then we finally found them.

Of course, the best part of the mobile is that it was made by my mom especially for Taj.  Totally worth more than $130!

DIY Sunburst mirror

Here is one of the small DIY projects that I was able to complete while on bedrest.  They required minimal labor and I did everything sitting on the floor so technically my legs were up.

The first is a DIY sunburst mirror.  I love sunburst mirrors.  They're all the rage right now.  Again, they were all the rage a year ago on the mainland and I think they're just hitting Hawaii, but anyway.  For the last 3 years, I have struggled with deciding what to put above our couch in the our living room.  On the wall adjacent to the couch, we have this rectangular frame of a beautiful orchid giclee print (which was a gift) done by Jocelyn Cheng, a second cousin of my husband's.

Nice to have talented relatives!  And on the wall opposite from the couch is this triptych o f photos we took when traveling (the first is of a fisherman's boat in Madras, India, the second the glaciers in Patagonia and the third a wall in Morocco), which is over black and white wedding photos of my parents, in-laws and our grandparents.  Again, more rectangles and squares.

I wasn't sure I wanted another painting (I figured that would be too much going on), or a rectangular mirror.  I'm obsessed with these mirrors that I see this designer Erinn Valencich use on hgtv.com

But, again, more rectangles, so wasn't sure about that.  And, I wanted to be sure, before spending lots of money on this mirror (not that I know how much this mirror costs, but it looks expensive!)

Then, I came across this DIY sunburst mirror on Centsational Girl


It uses paint sticks and an embroidery hoop.  So, I decided to try it.  My mirror cost a little more because I paid for the paint sticks (23 cents each) and the hard part was finding the longer paint sticks.  I went to 3 different home improvement stores - Lowe's, City Mill and Home Depot and all of them only had the shorter paint sticks.  Then, it occurred to me that a paint center for professional painters would probably have longer paint sticks since they use 5 gallon paint cans.  So, I hit the jackpot at the Glidden Professional Paint Center on King Street.

 

I followed the directions on the blog( the only exception is that I used different paint colors) which were easy enough to do, even on bedrest and whalah!  My new $20 mirror for above our couch.  I love the way it turned out and it was nice that I could customize the
paint colors, mixing paint until it was exactly what I wanted for the space.