new room

A few months ago, we converted a small three-season sun porch off the back of our house into a year-round bedroom for Matteo. The sun porch was great and well-used but losing the space in the winter was tough. When we learned we were expecting another baby we knew we needed to expand and would have to say goodbye to the sun porch as we knew it.

Here is what it looked like when we first moved in:



And last summer, when we used it as an extra playroom:



And now, ta-da - a four-season big boy bedroom!



I love that he has his own little room and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Being able to use that extra space through the winter really has helped make the house feel larger. And now that we know we're having two boys, eventually we'll probably give them both of the spaces to share with one room for sleeping and one for play.

But I have to admit, on sunny days with all of the windows open, that daybed was a *really* pleasant place for a nap.



Lucky for us (insert sarcastic laugh here) our napping days are going to quickly be behind us. I have the feeling we're going to be too busy to even think about those lazy sun porch afternoons.

(Oh yeah - STILL PREGNANT.)

basement playroom - the big reveal

Remember when we tore apart our basement this winter with the intention of turning it into a playroom? And remember how my last post about it was this, and then I never actually posted any photos of what it ended up looking like in the end? (Oops. Sorry.)

TA DA!!



We still have some decorating to do but the major stuff is done. The high cabinets hold our barware and the low cabinets are filled with toys. And with the extra window we get so much more natural light in the room.
We're so happy with it. And the best part is since Matt and I have our own spaces down there (his turntables and records are in another part of the room and my little office/project room is connected to the playroom) we can each be down there working on our own stuff knowing Matteo is safe and nearby and occupied in the playroom. We've already been spending way more time down there than we ever did. I'm so happy we did this.

matteo's second birthday party

Matteo's birthday fell on a Saturday this year and since it's already on Cinco de Mayo...well...I got a little carried away with the party. But it went off without a hitch, and everyone seemed to have a great time. A big thank you to our friends Carrie and Joe for all of their help. Carrie helped set up and took these amazing photos, and Joe played a live set for the guests that included several kid-friendly songs he taught himself just for the occasion.








Matteo was so excited to see his friends! This is Baby Anna from school.

progress

It's been a few weeks since we ripped apart our basement and it's really starting to look good. The drywall is up and primed and the new windows are in. This weekend I'll be cleaning and painting so all that will be left is to install the new cabinetry, which has been ordered and should be here mid-March. And, of course, add furniture and toys. Duh.

To recap:

Here is what the basement looked like when we first moved in. Burlap stapled to the ceiling, old kitchen, and wood paneling on the walls. Creep city.



The first thing we did was take down the burlap and paint the ceiling and walls white. Which immediately made the space look a lot better.



But we still had the weird kitchen to deal with. We tried hiding it with curtains, but that looked strange. And even though it was painted, the wood paneling was in bad shape and the windows were old and falling apart. And, as you can see, the random furniture makes the room look like somewhere the kids from 'That 70's Show' would be hanging out. The whole room really needed an overhaul. So Operation Playroom 2012 was launched.

First, we (meaning Matt and Joe) tore out the old kitchen.





Then we had a contractor cover the old paneling with drywall and re-do the three windows in the room, one of which had been paneled over when the old kitchen was installed. This is how it looks today.



I forgot to post this picture when I posted about this project before, but when we were tearing out the old cabinets even Matteo helped. He had the very important job of restocking the beer fridge.



There are some things that we just can't change. Like the height of the ceilings, or the fact that to get to this room you have to walk through the unfinished part of our basement. But we can at least make the space a lot nicer than it was. Stay tuned!

basement project - part 1

We quickly realized we need more space in our house once Matteo officially became a toddler. While the layout of our house is quirky, we're fortunate to have a lot of underutilized space so we're updating our basement and turning it into a playroom.

This weekend was Phase 1 - Destruction. Our basement used to be a separate apartment and one wall was an old kitchen, complete with a 50's-era stove. With the help of Joe and Carrie, Saturday morning we tore it all out. One of the best finds was another window that had been covered up with wood paneling. The bottom picture was taken at night but it really does make a huge difference in how much natural light we get down there. We also found one of those coin with a naked lady on it that says, "Heads I Win" on one side, and "Tails You Lose" on the other. Oh, if our basement could only talk the stories it would tell...







The next steps are to 1.) put up drywall on this wall and two other walls in the basement that are covered in wood paneling. 2.) Paint the room. And, 3.) install simple IKEA cabinets for storage.

I have a big vision for this room, people. Wish us luck!

337!

Guess what? I made $337 at my garage sale this weekend! And, even better, I got rid of a TON of stuff in the process! It was a lot of work but I'm so happy I did it. For anyone out there considering having a garage sale of your own, here are some things I learned along the way.

1. Have a goal: Yes, my goal was to get rid of stuff and make some money. But my REAL, big-picture goal is re-do the built-in cabinets in our basement this winter. Whenever I'd come across something I wasn't sure I wanted to sell I asked myself if someone would give me money for it, and if that money put me closer to my goal of fixing up our basement and creating more living space for us, would I sell it to them? In almost every instance the answer was always, "HELL YES." Having that carrot on a stick motivated me to be much more objective about getting rid of things.

2. Be thorough, you never know what you might find: I got ready for the sale over the course of about three weekends. I literally went through every plastic bin, every cabinet, and every drawer in our house looking for things I could sell. Not only did I find stuff I forgot I even had that I ended up selling, I found things I forgot I even had that I'm using and enjoying now.

3. Show 'em what you got: I posted Craigslist ads Thursday and Friday and included pictures of things I was selling. I tried styling them as best I could, although that was a challenge considering I took the photos late at night in my garage, which has peeling seafoam green walls. Here's a sample:



Having pictures definitely helped. People came looking for specific things they saw in the photos and one woman even said, "Your stuff looked so cute, the pictures made me want to buy it all!" I also put up signs around the neighborhood the night before that included descriptions of things I was selling.

4. How you display things matters: I had a bunch of baby clothes to sell and a friend of mine gave me the great idea of hanging them on a clothesline with clothespins. Stuff hanging up sold, but the other stuff in a big bin did not. (I had too many things to hang them all.) People don't like to dig through bins of stuff that isn't organized. However,people do like to dig through bins of free stuff. I'll get to that tip in a minute.

I also had a lot of clothes of my own in great condition that I wanted to get rid of so I borrowed a couple of clothing racks and wrote out individual hang tags for each item (there were a few things that had never even been worn so using the tags instead of price stickers allowed me to write that on there). I also borrowed a big mirror and set up a make-shift dressing room off the side of the house. It worked! I sold TONS of clothes.



5. Have a sale at your sale: Although making money was nice, getting rid of so much stuff was almost nicer. At the beginning of the sale I put up signs that said during the last hour, everything left would be half price. People really did come back. They got stuff at crazy low prices, and I got rid of stuff I otherwise may have been stuck with.

6. Give stuff away: I set out a plate of free cookies, which helped build goodwill with my shoppers. I also had a big crate of magazines that I marked free, most of which disappeared. But the busiest bin of all was the FREE STUFF bin that had all sorts of random stuff in it. Fabric remnants, clothes with small spots and tears, gladware containers, makeup samples you pull out of magazines - gone! Most were things I otherwise would have thrown away so it was good to see them go off to good homes.

7. Invite your friends to join you: My friend Stefanie came over with some of her stuff to sell. She got rid of some stuff and made some money, I had her help and her company for a few hours, and we both ended up with some of each other's stuff that we liked. Winners all around.

One final benefit of having this sale was spending time in corners of our home that don't see a lot of action. Along the way I was also inspired to clean out the attic, better organize the back room of our basement, and am in the process of making a list of projects I'd like to tackle this winter. We've been in this house four years and that's enough time to become complacent. It's time to break some bad habits we've gotten into. When paint chips, I want to touch it up. When things break (even the little things), I want to fix them. When your neighbor shoots holes in your window with a BB gun trying to kill squirrels, I want to plug the holes up. That kind of stuff - the kind of stuff that makes your home feel much healthier inside and out.

new baby gate

I also spent the weekend finishing this:

before - baby death trap







after - ta da! no more rusty nails or sharp chicken wire for babies to cut themselves on!



yeah...that only took two years to fix. alright, what's next!

stuff

There's definitely some kind of fall juju in the air right now and it's sending my nesting instincts into overload. Last weekend I spent a good amount of time weeding through closets and storage containers and cupboards in preparation for a garage sale I'm planning to hold in a couple of weeks.

What I'll actually be able to sell remains to be seen. (What doesn't sell will be donated so it will still end up out of the house.) So far it feels great just to purge and know stuff is finally going OUT instead of always coming IN.

After the garage sale is over and I have lots of dollar bills and quarters in my money box at the end of the day, it can't just end there. One of my new goals is to try to be much more mindful about stuff. Making sure as much (if not more) goes out than in, and making sure the stuff that comes in is quality and has value. Whether clothing, housewares, toys, whatever - I've got to have some tougher standards or I'm going to end up right back where I started.

See this quote? (from a page out of Domino magazine, R.I.P.)



Uh huh. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about.

You know what else is awesome about that picture? That round yellow pan on the shelf under the counter. My family had a whole set of that cookware and most of it ended up with my Dad. Two days ago he called, said he noticed in a photo that I had one of the pieces sitting on my stove, and offered to send me the rest of the set. (Thanks, Dad. What a wonderful, unexpected gift.)

Yes, technically, this is more stuff. But I love those yellow pots and pans and I will keep them forever. They are beautiful, they will be used often, they are well made, and they have sentimental value.

These are some of the criteria I've come up with when deciding whether something is a keeper. What kind of criteria do you use? How do you decide what to hang on to for years and what to pass on? Please share - this is a work in progress and I still have a lot more stuff to go through!

appreciating the patina

This came in the mail yesterday and boy am I all over that room. Now this is vintage modern, people. I love the high ceilings and the leather banquette and the beautiful architectural details (those windows! arrrgh...so amazing). I love the fancy yet well-worn feel of it all. But the real wow factor comes from the mix of all that goodness living in harmony with the Saarinen table, the Enzo Mari prints, and the industrial stools.

There's a great quote from the homeowner (who is the Martha Stewart Living Editor-in-Chief, naturally) inside the magazine.

"If you're going to have nice things and kids, you have to appreciate patina."

I totally subscribe to that. If you're in our house and you can see beyond the IKEA, you may notice we actually have some nice furniture mixed in here and there. When I first got the nice things, I used to cringe when I'd discover dings from the stroller or scratches from the cat in the wood. But it can all be fixed, one day, when children and cats are gone and it's just us again.

For now, our furniture tells a story. It says, "I am loved, I am cherished, and I live in a busy home with cats and dogs and tiny children who like to push toy lawnmowers into my sides."

sunset magazine

My dad gave me a subscription to Sunset magazine for Christmas this year and it's become one of my new favorites. Although it's targeted at people who live out West, I really love the home and food features. My dream (pipe dream?) is to eventually enlarge our little bungalow by adding a second story. Many of the homes featured in Sunset are older, small bungalows like ours, transformed into larger, more modern spaces and I've been collecting images that catch my eye.

In no particular order, here three home upgrades I've been dreaming about. All images from Sunset.

1.) Tile the shower in the upstairs bathroom - *drool*. Those blue Heath Ceramics tiles are insanely gorgeous. They're also insanely expensive. But what bang for your buck. We need to do something soon about the janky, gross shower stall currently in our bathroom and replacing it with something like this would be dreamy.



I mean, these tiles are so cool they even have their own movie.

http://youtu.be/gNCPygFbHGI

2.) Build a stone patio - At some point I would like to build a stone patio on the top-level of our backyard, which is currently grass. Ours would be a little more free-form than this one, but the intention is to better define an area of the backyard that would serve as an extended living space in warm weather months. I'd also like to enlarge our deck and, if space allows, build bench seating along the exterior of our home, kind of like this patio has but out of wood instead of stone.



3.) Enlarge our kitchen - This is the real humdinger. Because of the layout of our home, any kitchen expansion could only happen if we build that mythical second story and move the bedrooms upstairs, which would be a crazy humongous job. But, if I just happen to win the lottery tomorrow or discover a magic genie who grants me three wishes, you better believe I'd build that sucker in a heartbeat and turn half of the downstairs into an open living/kitchen area. I like the more formal dining area in the top picture, but that cute little Saarinen table and cozy bench seating works for me too.

playhouse

I need to stay away from Apartment Therapy. Argh! Last weekend I saw this post and I've had playhouses on the brain ever since. I've never been crazy about those little plastic houses, they always seem so sad and faded when you see them in real-life, but AT has featured some pretty charming fixer uppers.





After a few days of searching, I finally found one of those same playhouses on Craigslist and am picking it up tomorrow. My plan is to paint it like a traditional Caribbean house. One of my favorite artists on St. Martin is known for paintings of traditional, colorful Caribbean homes and I've been looking at his work for inspiration. So far, these are my favorites:









We have this print hanging in our bedroom and for sentimental reasons I think I'm leaning toward these colors.



What do you think?

hidden treasures

I'll admit it, I've become a resale junkie. One of my favorite times of the year is late spring when the neighborhood garage sale circuit is in full swing. You never know what you're going to find. What I find is usually nothing I ever need but when I do strike gold and find the exact thing I've been looking for in some random person's front yard, I get a little nuts.

I ended up getting a lot of other great stuff at the Half-Pint sale last weekend including a cake pan in the shape of a 1 (so timely!), a yo gabba gabba dvd, a set of books on tape of Winnie the Pooh stories for the car, some funny vintage kid's clothes, and a great copy of I Am a Bunny, illustrated by Richard Scarry.



But definitely my second favorite score (after the Rody, of course) was this perfect little reversible Dwell Baby crib comforter. It didn't involve the intense stake out the Rody entailed, but was a total unexpected surprise that I absolutely am thrilled with. Matteo's crib turns into a little bed and I've been on the lookout for a tiny little comforter that will fit it. Voilà!

maps

I used to subscribe to Elle Decor and my favorite feature was always the little illustrated map in the "Elle Decor goes to..." section. I've been tearing them out and keeping them for years with the idea of framing a few cities where Matt and I have lived.

Lena Corwin, the illustrator, released a book this month of 40 of her personal favorites, which I just ordered. It include some of our cities - Baltimore, Washington D.C., Minneapolis and Portland - as well as 20 international destinations.

For some reason Anchorage and Milwaukee didn't make the cut this time around. Say what? If the Bronze Fonz isn't a top design attraction people, I don't know what is.

downstairs upgrade

We've been in our house for almost four years and I'm starting to get itchy to re-do our basement. The finished part of our basement is home to Matt's turntables and has hosted many evenings of good friends, good drinks and good music.

Now that we have a little one crawling about it would be easy to make it a playroom for Matteo. But I also think that adults need their own spaces. And since he's already claimed most of the upstairs as his domain, I'm holding firm to the idea of keeping the downstairs for us.


photo from makelike

Wouldn't something like this be great? I know this isn't a basement, but the idea of a big comfy chair and a place to chill out and listen to records is really dreamy. Over the past year our little party room has been working overtime as a part-time guest room/outgrown baby clothes storage area/all-purpose dumping ground for anything the baby shouldn't be getting into upstairs. I'd like to spend a little time this spring sprucing things up and creating a space that's safe for Matteo, but intended as a retreat for adults.

blizzard!

Yesterday's forecast was right. We got at least 12 inches last night on top of the four inches we got Monday.


looking out from our garage at our street


snowdrifts


you can see how high the snowdrifts are relative to me


side of the house, the snowdrifts are halfway up the kitchen door


mailbox


looking down the sidewalk