A Forest-Themed Toddler Room...it's a work in progress.

Butterflies

I ordered these butterflies from a shop on Etsy. Check out the collection HERE. Normally they come with magnets on the back, but I had the artist leave the magnets off so that I could stick them directly onto the wall. I already had the antique oval frame which created this whimsical look.

Storage

I wanted as many of Babe's toys as possible to be out of sight so they don't take over from the simple forest theme of the room. I started with the above unit with the pink pull out tubs from Ikea (wish it had come in plain white or green) to store most of her loose toys. I bought some pretty little labels and applied them to the front of each tote. And then I bought the shelving unit below for inside her closet to hide all her books but still keep them accessible for her. I wanted to keep her old crib rails safe in case I sell the crib later so I stashed them in the closet and am currently using them for shoe storage. I also hung hooks from her slatted closet doors for extra hanging abilities and traded out the old seventies knobs for some pretty little glass ones from Home Depot.

  

Lighting

Babe still has the old wall-mounted light that I featured in my old post on her nursery. It still fits as it has a monkeys on a vine theme. But I am loving this new squirrel lamp which was a gift from Babe's grandmother. The mushroom nightlight was purchased from Canadian Target before it closed shop and vanished from the Land of the North. It's convenient that the nightlight can plug in or run on batteries.

Here's the old lighting that we still use that was featured in the Nursery post.

Cushions

I'm still looking for the perfect forest-themed bedspread so for now we are using an inexpensive Ikea option. I might have to end up buying a fabric that I like and sewing my own. The fox and deer cushions were purchased from Home Sense.

More Forest

I have had my eye on a gorgeous, realistic forest mural wallpaper for Babe's room ever since I got pregnant. But we are always renting and I haven't wanted to commit to the cost of it or the application and eventual tear down. But last spring we grabbed this three panel forest screen at a fundraising auction. It goes great with the grass-like shag rug we got from Ikea and the adorable fawn wall decal I ordered from THIS SHOP on Etsy. The mini grand piano is from Chapters/Indigo. The carpet and screen combo create a temporary little forested corner until I can get her a room where I'm happy to commit to a full wallpaper/mural effect.

Mounted Stuffy

This was featured in our trip to Calgary post but I'm still loving it and it still fits the theme. It was purchased at the Calgary Airport.

Sky/Ceiling

Babe has one of those little stuffies that projects stars onto the ceiling at night and plays ambient noise. But I wanted a touch of nature on the ceiling in the daytime too. Enter THIS TUTORIAL VIDEO on making a cloud with lights and I thought I could do that, but with a mobile twist. It's kind of still a work in progress as I wanted to use clear fishing line instead of basic thread. But the fishing line of course has a lot of curl to it. I discovered I could get about 75 per cent of the curl out by using my hair straightener on a low heat setting and pulling the line through quickly (a hint that also works for quickly ironing your boxing hand wraps) but some of the kinks still remain. I'm hoping they will straighten out over time otherwise I guess I will re-string all the beads with plain thread. The cloud is made with paper lanterns and synthetic batting. In the video they use a glue gun to attach the batting to the lanterns but I found spray glue worked much faster. Stinks a bit though so the cloud spent a couple nights outside. The video peeps hung little curtain lights from their cloud but Babe and I wanted rain drops so I bought the blue and clear beads from Michaels. I may still put a battery-powered light inside the cloud at a later date - a nice perk to the cloud shell being made out of lanterns and not a paper mache ball or something is that you can still reach inside of it.

Cozy Robots.

Made some fuzzy little buddies for some friends on Valentine's Day. 

I love these little robots and have wanted to make one for along time. You can buy them from various makers online but I found a pattern on Etsy and made my own. 

Cute huh?

Keepsakes: Explosion Boxes.

I just thought I'd share some pics of my first attempt at making explosion boxes. Back at Christmas I made each of my parents one and J one as well. They turned out to be nice little keepsakes
of Babe's first year. 

I also made these adorable little sewing kits for all the women in my family. Each recycled baby food jar has needles, thread, a thimble, a measuring tape, pins, little fabric patches and some buttons. To make them extra special I turned the lid into a pin cushion and put a personalized label on each one. They are the perfect size for traveling or keeping at an office, summer cabin or in a guest room.

Inside each box is photos from Babe's first year as well as her ultrasound image, footprint and little embellishments.

Amazing Art Project Showcases Gender-Coloured Toys.

Check out artist JeongMee Yoon's "The Pink and Blue Project" here.

I found this really interesting. When I was pregnant I made such an effort to avoid buying "girl-coloured" clothing that I realized later that my baby daughter had more boyish clothing than girly clothing.

Now, I don't try so hard. I buy what I think is cute. But I do try to avoid amassing a ton of pink and purple crap and so far I am desperately avoiding commercial stuff - such as Disney Princess everything.

I know that as Babe gets older she is going to have her own preferences and I fear they may lean towards the sparkly and pastel. But if that's the case I'll remind myself that it's just a faze and I'll suck it up.

My Mom was so wary of commercial brand toys that I rarely got anything I really wanted. It wasn't that I wasn't spoiled. I was. But I didn't have Barbies and Cabbage Patch Dolls, she wanted to avoid buying toys like that, which were so heavily marketed towards children regardless of their actual educational or entertainment value.

Now I totally get why she did it, but at the time I was dying to have the same things my friends had. And she must've told my friend's parents about her beliefs because while the other kids got hoards of My Little Ponies at their birthday parties, I always got art kits. I would think my birthday party would be my only opportunity to get a "commercial toy" because surely my friends would get me one...but it never happened. But now I'm glad I was different.

Speaking of hoarding toys, I don't know if this was the artist's intention at all, but equally as interesting as the colour of the toys is the sheer amount of them. It's pretty gross to see the excess of possessions a child has. And my kid is no better.

Her next series should be comparing the treasures of one Western child with those of a third world child.

Really? Again? The New Bumbo Recall.

READ HERE: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/08/15/bumbo-baby-seat-recall.html


Urgh! Well it was bound to happen. Once again a few parents who can't think for themselves or take responsibility for their actions are ruining it for the rest of us.

I'm not going to bother ordering the safety strap. And there already is a warning label on the damn thing.

Yes, Babe can get out of it. Yes she did almost hit her head once. But she was sitting on the carpeted floor and it really wasn't a big deal.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2012/08/15/bumbo-baby-seat-recall.html

See my old post on the previous Bumbo recalls here.

Flowers, Bows and Pom Poms!

It's no secret that I like DIY projects, arts and crafts. I'm always making something. I haven't had as much time to be creative since Babe came along (I did get three Christmas eggs made this year) but I have had enough time to make the odd thing.

I was seeing adorable baby headbands everywhere but I never came across any. I found a couple of cute ones at Target in the states but I wanted more, more, MORE! But when I got home I couldn't find them here and I'm too impatient to wait for orders from Etsy - but FYI there are adorable baby headbands on Etsy - so I did what I usually do when I want something that I can't find or afford. I make it. If it's makable. By me. That's how I ended up with my kitchen table, cat scratching post, sock monkeys, wall art etc...

So here are some pics of what I have so far. I'm not going to include how-to's here because there are a million places online that you can go to if you want to make these yourself. There are tutorials on YouTube, blogs and websites. I just googled "how to make..." and whatever I was looking for and then scrolled through everything until I saw something I liked.

Anyway, here are some of the highlights:

I started with these pom pom headbands.

I made two different kinds. One kind with fabric and one kind with felt.

Then I moved on to these rolled fabric flowers (top black and white and lower peach).

Then I tried this weird fabric flower which involves twisting and pinning (top multi-coloured) but it took a realllly long time. So I only made the one.

Next I moved onto felt roses. You can see a few others in above pics.

Then I decided that I wanted to make bows. So I started with fabric because I really liked the anchor material above.

But then I found a tutorial on these felt bows and I've been addicted to making them ever since.  

Cream.

White, blue, black. I can't stop.

 Bows without bands yet.

Babe and her pretty little roses.

Every night after Babe goes to bed I have been sitting on the floor in front of the TV with a glass of wine and my sewing kit.

Every baby girl I know is getting one.

The Trip To The Tulips.

So I decided to head south of the border with my parents to go and see the tulip fields in La Conner, Washington. We planned to go on the Easter long weekend because my mom had extra days off of work and the weather was finally supposed to be nice. The plan was to see the flowers, shop at the outlets for a bit and maybe pick up a jogging stroller.

Here are some photos of our overnight in Washington state.

The drive down was pretty good. Babe was a little fussy off and on but she did fairly well considering she was in the car for over an hour. It was a lot of extra work for me to sit in the back and entertain her the whole time but again, it wasn't a really long drive.

I was really excited to see the tulip fields but alas, when we got to our destination there were no tulips to be seen. Boo. I remember asking my dad to call ahead and make sure they were blooming before we came...but I guess that didn't happen. I could have sworn he said he had checked - hmmmmmm. Anyway it was disappointing since it was the main reason we came.

There were however a few daffodil fields in bloom which were very pretty. But I got bored of yellow after awhile. I was really hoping that the tulips would bloom overnight but they didn't.

My dad had reserved us a two-bedroom suite in a local hotel, the La Conner Channel Lodge so that we wouldn't have to do all the driving with Babe in one day. It was great to be able to stay over because after a few hours in town Babe was getting pretty fussy and turning around and driving home would have sucked.

The hotel was really cute. Built right on the channel you can watch boats pass all day and hear frogs and crickets at night. This was the view from our room:

Unfortunately the two-bedroom suite wasn't exactly what we had in mind. The main room had a beautiful king-sized bed in it - perfect for my parents. But...the second bedroom didn't exactly suit Babe and I. I had decided against bringing her bassinet all the way there for one night and I planned on just letting her sleep in the big hotel bed with me. But when I walked into the second bedroom it was clear that wasn't going to work so well. The second bedroom with its pint-sized ship bunks was clearly intended for children.

Thank goodness I'm fairly short because I was still able to fit. Babe couldn't sleep in the other bunk because I wouldn't be able to roll over and feed her in the night. So we pulled the comforter off the other bed and grabbed a bunch of extra towels and Babe's blankets and made a padded area for Babe on the wooden edge of my bed against the wall. Don't worry - no part of my child touched the questionably clean hotel bedspread, it was only used for padding. I don't trust those things.

The rest of the room was perfect though, nice big bathroom, jacuzzi tub, cute porch and a fireplace.

We did a little shopping around La Conner that day. I bought one of these cool light bulbs at an antique lighting store (the bulbs aren't antiques) and we took photos of Babe in funny places. We finished the day with a great dinner at the La Conner Seafood and Prime Rib House. I had the macadamia nut encrusted halibut and vanilla creme brulee for desert. It was yummy.

The next morning I had a massage that my dad had generously booked for me. I think it was just his sneaky way of getting more time alone with the baby but it was super relaxing anyway, and since it was in house all I had to do was walk downstairs.

We then headed to the tulip gardens nearby just so we could say we had seen some of the elusive flowers. Here's the little outdoor field that was planted outside Tulip Town. It wasn't the same as the real thing but it gave me an idea of how the area would look once the fields bloomed. There was still a lot of green - even at the gardens.

After Tulip Town we stopped at the RoozenGaarde so my dad could order bulbs for the fall and we could have lunch. It was so sunny and warm that my little winter baby finally had a chance to take off her socks and explore the grass, another first.

After that we raced to the outlets so us girls could shop for an hour while my dad napped in the car and then raced back across the border before traffic got too backed up.

Just a quick little overnighter with Babe. Hopefully the next time Babe and I cross the border it'll be to visit my friend K in Washington, D.C. or to take Babe for a sleepover at my friend R's summer getaway.