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.

4 reno projects - say what?

Somehow, we've gone from doing one home reno project - the grass, to 4. I'm not really sure how that happened. But, as best as I can figure it, it all started with the car. We have 5 photovoltaic panels on our roof that we did last year. We knew at the time that was about 1/3 of what we would need to zero out our electric bill. But, we figured, we had time to install the rest. Since we got the car, we then decided, maybe it was better to go ahead and get some more panels put up. Then, I talked to my accountant, and he recommended maxing out the photovoltaic panels, because he wasn't sure if the federal and state rebates would remain the same for 2012 because of the budget/deficit, etc. So, then, the whole thing snowballed into something like this...

And, throw in there the grass and closing off this weird double door thing we have off the guest room in preparation for my parents' arrival (more on that later) and I'm not sure how many more projects we have!

And, we're usually a very slow decision making couple. Hence the pictures on the floor of our house, waiting to be hung, 6 months later. Boxes full of Jeff's childhood things we haven't gone through for 3 years. We don't usually rush into things. But, everything somehow got linked together and now we're getting quotes for all sorts of things and aren't even sure which projects to prioritize first, and which ones are really important to us.

In the interim, here are some pics of the grass. It's sad that it actually looks so much better with black topsoil over everything than the dead weeds we had before. I'll post more pics as the work progresses.

Look who wants to play in the dirt.

And here are some more in progress pics of the tables/chairs from the playroom. After 1 coat of primer and 3 coats of chalkboard paint, the legs are still looking streaky, so I need another coat. And the chairs have only one coat, so they need an extra coat, plus 2 coats of polyurathane. So, still more work to be done. But, when Nikhil saw the tables and chairs, I told him Mommy was making them for him and he turned to me and said "Thank you Mommy", so sweetly and totally unprompted. Of course, I'd be willing to do this 100 more times just for that!

Grass, grass and more grass

So, when we purchased our house, we did a lot of things to update it. Pics to come soon. There was a reason the house sat on the market for over a year and we were able to get it for such a good price, but none of it was really structural. But, the one area which we did not improve upon was the grass.
Here is our house with its beautiful grass just a month before we moved in. Almost looks like carpet doesn't it?

And, sad to say, here it is now. It actually looks way worse in person than it does in this picture. I think the fact that we haven't mowed it in over 8 week is actually hiding all the areas of dead grass.

Who knew about thatching and dethatching? We didn't! We thought if we mowed the lawn every 2 weeks, and watered it, that would be enough. Rookie first time home owners mistake. Grass in Hawaii requires a level of maintenance that we were didn't realize. It's actually now getting kind of embarassing. I think our neighbor trimmed our bushes out front for us out of sympathy (and maybe he was tired of looking at our overrun yard). I'm too mortified to post pics of our front yard, because it's WAY worse. We have been paralyzed by inaction. We're not sure what to do, so we've done nothing.

But, now I think it's time to do something. We live in Hawaii where we can be outside year round and having a nice backyard is like expanding your square footage, so I'm willing to invest the dough. Though it hurts to do so! We decided to get new grass put in. Because no matter what we do for our grass - water, mow, sing to it, nothing seems to be working and it remains dry and brown. The front is actually just patches of weeds, but since it's green, at least it doesn't look terrible.

So, as we delve into the world of grass, we have learned plenty! I guess there are 2 main options of grass for lawns out here. El Toro and Seashore paspalum. El Toro..the bull, kind of an odd name for grass, is what I think, but it is apparently the "Lexus of grass" according to a lawn guy who had some kind of degree in lawn and turf management. I personally, think it's hard to judge the type of grass you want for you whole lawn by looking at a small square of it at Home Depot. So, when we are taking walks in our neighborhood and we spot a grass that is El Toro or seashore, we have actually taken our shoes off and walk a little bit on our neighbor's yard. You really got to feel the grass, you know? It's important! I don't want to get grass that's too rough or prickly for my son! Thankfully, none of our neighbors have witnessed us doing this, though in Hawaii I think this is not as weird as it would be if I were doing this in Raleigh, NC!