Echo's New Room

At long last Echo's big girl room is complete! This was one of the major things we had to do to get ready for the new baby and we have been planning and talking about it for so long that we are really excited to finally get it done. We plan to put the new baby in the nursery (Echo's old room) because it is right across the hall from us and has easy night time access for me. Echo has been sleeping really well lately making it less important for her to be right next to us so moving her to the other room just made sense. I didn't want them sharing a room at this point because I'm afraid the baby will wake Echo up and don't want to mess with her sleep.  

Before

The biggest thing we had to do in this room was get rid of the nasty carpet (as seen in the before picture). Eric's parents came down last weekend to help us work on it and they knocked the whole thing out in just two days! The new floor looks amazing, it really makes me want to do the rest of the rooms that haven't been done yet but it is a huge pain so who knows when that will happen.

My contribution to the room was a mural by Echo's floor bed. I originally really wanted to do this room in a nautical theme (mostly because I wanted to paint a nautical mural) but I could see that Echo really didn't care about under sea stuff as much as I do so in the end I tried to make it something she would enjoy more. She loves to help me in the garden and loves animals so I did some sunflowers and a rabbit for her. She is so proud of this mural and loves the rabbit in particular. She often goes up to it and pats it or gives it kisses, so cute!

This room feels so much more open and it has been fun watching her get used to it. She spent her first night in her new room last night and she slept great in spite of my worries about her adjusting to a new space.

I'm so happy to have her moved in because now she will have plenty of time to think of this as her room before the baby comes and takes over her old room! We still have a few of her things to move in and Eric is building some shelves in her closet but other than that the room is done. Yay!

Changing and Rearranging

We have been making big changes in our main living area of the house and now I am finally getting around to sharing some photos of our updates. I think it's really interesting to see how our needs have changed and how the space has developed over time. The first thing I wanted to show off are the awesome built in stairs that Eric made for under our staircase!

This is a project we have been wanting to do since we moved in. The previous space under the stairs was inaccessible and basically unusable and a waste of space.  We had some bookshelves stuck back there but we really couldn't get to them and they didn't give us as much storage as we wanted.  The new built in shelves are very wide and very deep and allow for plenty of storage for our games and extra kitchen goods.

The top section of the shelves will one day be a reading nook for Echo but for now it's a place to hide the cat food so Echo can't eat it (babies love to eat cat food, don't ask me why). 

In order to be able to access the shelves we had to do a little furniture rearrangement and this is the new setup. It is a much cozier arrangement and allows for better conversation and a better spot to sit by the fire since the furniture is closer together now. We even found a nice little nook for Echo's easel and her little rocking chair.

The area by the front window has changed too since we swapped out the round table that was in this corner with the rectangular table that used to be in the dining room. Eric is now using this corner as his work desk for when he works from home. It's great because he has a lovely view out in to the front yard and plenty of light. He also sold his IMac and works exclusively on his new Chrome Book and his Ipad so he doesn't need much room. We almost never use the loft now because we have pretty much stopped watching tv altogether and Echo hates being confined in the small space up there, preferring to have free reign of the whole house. The consequence of this is that we are using our "formal" living room a lot more now and not really spending much time in the the loft. Plans for how to revise the loft space to make it more usable are in the works though.

We got a cool new firewood holder so we can have dry wood inside and it fits nicely with the new furniture arrangement (it needs to be filled up more though!). The house is starting to feel like a greenhouse because I had to move so many plants inside to save them from the freezing weather but it makes everything feel a little fresher and greener so that's nice.

Here is a picture of the new dining room arrangement. I actually think the round table fits better in this space. Unfortunately this area wasn't very clean for this photo, oh well.

I also felt the need to change out the art on the dining room wall so I got a huge poster sized print of one of my photographs and framed it for this wall. I'm loving the updated look. The glass in the frame is a little too reflective though and messes with the photograph, I'm working on a solution to this. I'm moving the art that used to be on this wall up in to the loft where I'm making a gallery wall.

Here is an aerial view of the new downstairs space. Sometimes I think it really helps perk up your spirits to rearrange and redecorate a space. I think this is just what we needed and we are appreciating our house in a whole new way now.

Support Beam For the Stairs

If you've ever walked up the stairs to our loft you know that they are really, insanely noisy. They also moved quite a bit, it was kind of disconcerting. Well as step one of a massive plan to build an elaborate storage and play area under the stairs Eric added a much needed support pillar to the corner of the stair landing.

  It's made of cedar, like pretty much everything else in our house, and Eric got a chance to perfect his mitering skills on this one. Eric is planning to do a more technical post about this on his blog in the near future. I don't know the details of how it's made, I just take the pictures :-)

It hasn't totally fixed the squeaking problem, although it is much better. The real improvement is how much sturdier it feels. It's nice to feel that the stairs aren't going to collapse under you when you go up them, and we are looking forward to working on the next phase of this project when we will have awesome built in storage and eventually a reading nook for Echo.

Replacing My Office Chair

Ever since Echo started crawling  my old office chair had become problematic. She wants to be near me when I am at my computer and she constantly crawling under my chair and bumping her head on it. When we recently went to a pregnant friend's house for a game night and she had an exercise ball she was using as a chair. I knew that these were great tools for child birth (although I didn't use one in my own labor) but I hadn't considered they benefits of continued use until I saw how much Echo loved to stand near the ball and drum on it. After that night I knew I wanted to replace my clunky old office chair with an exercise ball ball. Here are some of the benefits of using one at your computer instead of a traditional chair.

1. They are great for your posture and spine alignment.

2. They keep you moving (seriously, it's so hard not to bounce while you sit on one) and therefore burning more calories while you spend time on the computer.

3. They are inexpensive and come in any color you want making them easy to afford and fit in with your decor.

4. Babies love them. If you have young kids it's awesome for them to drum on and play with and you don't have to worry about them getting hurt. It's also a great tool for soothing babies because you cvan easily bounce them while sitting on one.

5. They are compact and save space.

6. You can also use them for exercise (if you feel so inclined).

7. They are fun! I love bouncing away on mine.

Having a ball, haha

A New Baby Gate

As Echo gets more and more mobile she is finding new things to get in to on a daily basis. Thus our baby proofing saga continues. While I was out of town visiting relatives last month Eric built us a stellar baby gate for our loft area.

We had a couple of baby gates of the more traditional variety but they were all a pain to take up and down and we need to get in and out of this area frequently. Eric used oak for the frame and cedar for the body of the gate. I have to say having a home built gate is a lot nicer looking than buying one, plus it fits the space perfectly. Another item checked off our baby proofing to do list!

No climbing down the stairs for you!

Let The Baby Proofing Begin!

Echo against the new fabric we put up to keep her from falling out of the loft ;-)

Echo has been getting increasingly mobile over the past few weeks and although she isn't technically crawling yet she is so close! In spite of the fact that she isn't exactly making the crawling motions she still manages to scoot, wriggle and pivot her way around the room. You can seriously look away for a minute, look back and she'll be five feet from where you left her. This has necessitated the beginning of our baby proofing efforts. It's a day we both looked forward to and dreaded. While we are excited at Echo's continued development our house is a baby proofing nightmare and we have so much to do! Here is what we've started with so far. 

A small portion of the cords we removed from the loft.

 Echo has lately developed a fascination with cords and wires of any kind, yikes! Any cord she can get her hands on goes directly in her mouth for chewing, this obviously had to stop. Since we spend most of our family time in the loft where the carpet is easy for her to play on we had to really re-examine the space. You see, the loft is also where our computers and tv live. Eric spent a good part of the day yesterday reworking as many of our electronics as he could to be wireless, allowing us to remove a lot of the wires and cables. What we couldn't remove got tucked away either up under a desk or under the edge of the carpet.

The loft seen from below

One of our big worries in baby proofing was the railing in our loft. It has widely spaced rungs that would be easy for her to slip though. At the same time this area is highly visible when you first walk in the house so we wanted it to be somewhat attractive still. We purchased three yards of fabric on sale at Ikea and used a heavy duty staple gun to fasten it to our railings. It's up there so well now that there's no way she can tear it down and it keeps us from worrying about her falling through.

Newly cleaned and organized loft

We also spent some time generally de-cluttering and cleaning the loft, the less random junk we have laying around the less there is for her to get in to. It already looks so much nicer without all the clutter that tends to build up in a highly used area. I just hope we can keep it this nice!

Still to come are baby gates at the tops and bottoms of the stairs and child safety locks on the cabinets and drawers. On top of that we still have to baby proof the rest of the house! This baby thing sure is a lot of work! Good thing she's so cute ;-)

New Dishwasher and Spring Cleaning!

Echo has been sleeping better (lots better!) lately and that combined with the beautiful Spring weather has given us a renewed burst of energy. I went from just barely getting through the day to actually wanting to do things around the house and I have been in major Spring cleaning mode. Eric has been getting better sleep too and his big project this weekend was installing our new dishwasher. We desperately needed one and had been planning on getting a new one with Eric's Christmas bonus. It only took us until April to get around to buying one. Here is a picture the kitchen with the new dishwasher installed.

Finally the dishwasher matches the other appliances, one more step complete in our kitchen renovation project! It's hard to see here but Eric also recently added a metal backsplash to the right of the sink.

Our old one was dingy white and probably original to the house which was built in 1976. Not only did it not clean the dished well (you had to pretty much scrub them completely clean before putting them in the dishwasher) but the coating on the wire racks was starting to chip off and it was leaving rust spots on our white dishes. The new dishwasher was a huge pain to install since the people who built our house were crazy and put everything together in odd ways and then basically stuck it in place with chewing gum and twine (that's an exaggeration but not by much). After slaving away all day at it however, Eric finally got the dishwasher in place and ready for the test run.

I hate the floors in our kitchen, that's another thing on the list of things to replace.

 It works so well I want to cry, this is going to make my life sooo much easier! It's also insanely quiet, bliss. It made all our other appliances look really dirty because it was so clean so it inspired me to scrub down the entire kitchen, another check marked off of my Spring cleaning list. The other great thing about the new dishwasher is the giant box it came in!

Naturally we turned it in to a cat house :-)

Montessori Style Rooms

I am a big fan of alternative education styles and there are a lot of good things to be said for the Montessori method. We plan to Unschool our children (more on that later) but I think there are a lot of ideas that we can take from other educational philosophies including Montessori. What I love about Montessori is that children are respected, given independence and allowed to use real tools and materials rather than fake, "kid" versions of things. Montessori is also child led, following the individual  child's interests and abilities. In this way it is very similar to Unscholling.  What I don't like about Montessori is that unrealistic imaginary play is discouraged. For example, you can play prentend at being an airplane pilot but not at being a fairy.


Anyway, enough of educational theory for the moment. I have been thinking a lot about how I want Echo's room to take shape when she gets older and we move her out of the nursery and in to her "big girl" room. I'm really interested in the Montessori style or organizing a room. Here are some great examples from my Pinterest board on kids rooms.

 Some of the things to take not of in a Montessori style room are beds directly on the floor, shelves and pictures that are low to the ground, within easy reach and toys organized in to easily accessed containers so that kids will have no trouble getting toys out and putting them away without adult help.

Other Montessori principles include limiting number of toys and choosing simple, quality toys over lots of cheap plastic toys. I love the idea of all this and would like to try it for our kids rooms but I feel like it might be harder in practice than in theory. Also, depending on the number of kids we end up having it could be difficult to have floor beds like I want, we may end up needing bunk beds!

Still I think all of this is is good information to keep in mind as my baby is quickly turning in to a little girl. She will be needing her big girl room before we know it!

Integrating Play Space In The Living Area

Anyone who follows me on Pinterest can see that I've developed a big interest in interior design geared towards children of late. There is something a bit more magical and fun about spaces designed with children in mind. Eric and I can't stop talking and making plans for the tree houses and play areas we want to design for our kids (Echo and her future siblings) and we don't want relegate their play areas to a separate part of the house. We want to the kids to feel that the house is theirs too, the whole house, not just their designated rooms. As full fledged members of the family they should be able to enjoy the living space as much as the adults.

The nice thing about owning your own home (soon to be paid off in full!) is that it gives you a lot of freedom to do whatever you want with the space, we can be as wacky as we want! And since we don't really view our home as an investment but as a place to live and raise our growing family we don't really need to be concerned with resale value when we make plans for building play areas in to our main living space.

I've been able to find some pretty excellent examples of children's play areas on pinterest, here are some of my favorites.

None of these are exactly what we want but we do plan to have some climbing space and a reading nook/hideout. We have some pretty exciting plans for all this but luckily we have some time since Echo won't be climbing for quite a while. Who knows what kind of cool designs we will come up with in the meantime?

A Tour of Baby Echo's Room

Since I am now on maternity leave I am in full nesting mode. I've been working hard to clean and organize the house (especially the nursery) so that everything will be ready when Echo makes her big debut. I finally have the nursery cleaned and most of the baby things put away, at least it's one room in the house that is ready! I feel like so much love has gone in to this room and I am so grateful to everyone who contributed, especially those who made items for the room with their own two hands. It makes it such a special place and it radiates warmth and love. Here is a little tour around the room :-)

View of the changing table area (my dad's old childhood desk with a changing pad on top). On the end nearest the camera I have hooks storing my travel changing pads and a beautiful handmade bag by my friend Aileen which is currently holding extra cloth diapers. 

Overall view of the room, it was dark today so the lighting isn't great but you get the idea

Echo's toy shelf, complete with handmade pillows spelling her name from my friend Joanna

Handmade blanket under the changing table along with her other blankets, wipes and hand sanitizer at the ready, extra diapers, covers and diaper cream hanging above the changing area. I also installed an led touch light above the changing area for nighttime diaper changes. 

More diaper storage, extra wipes and baby toiletries 

art for Echo's room, the bottom one was a wedding gift from a coworker and the top one is an original watercolor I bought in Puerto Rico (Echo's first trip overseas, even though she was still in my tummy)

Wooden shelf for holding small toys, I also put our wedding cake toppers on here so mommy and daddy can watch over her :-)

The quilt hanging over the rocker was made by one of Eric's family members for us, the rocker was one that my mom used to rock me on as a baby and she and dad refinished it for me. We added a little clip lamp for reading and you can see my awesome diaper bag to the left of the rocker. 

My shelf of children's books and a cute cloth covered box which is currently storing her nice baby blankets. 

Crib with baby quilt from my friend Mary and a mobile made by one of Eric's family members

More art, these are all from etsy. 

 I'm so excited to have Echo's room all ready! Can't wait for her to get here!