Nursery and Kids Rooms

I am working on helping my mom ORGANIZE and re-DECORATE her play room (I will show the progress later in November), and I was searching for inspirational images and came across this AMAZING website with BEAUTIFUL nurseries and kid rooms.

 

Oh my goodness...all these rooms are so inspirational! It makes me want to have 50 more kids ;) Or you all could hire me to decorate your kids rooms so I don't have to pop out that many babies ;)

I hope these pictures inspire happy thoughts! Check out this LINK to see some more pictures of these rooms and some ADDITIONAL rooms that are also amazing.

Peace OUT!
Cyndi

Nie & Halloween Flashback

Halloween is Sunday! Have you decorated yet? I've only JUST gotten excited about it. The air is chilly, the leaves are falling down, I finally got my daughter's costume all situated. It'll be her first trick or treating experience! I can't wait. I am terrible at decorating for holidays, but you know who isn't? In fact she may as well OWN the holidays. You know who I'm talking about: NieNie from NieNie Dialogues. I eagerly anticipate her Halloween home decor every single year. It's never contrived or plastic-y ... just stylishly spooky. These photos are from 2007. To get this look you could literally walk out your front door, grab some branches and you're halfway there. 

Adding little extras like the birds and spiders would be a cinch. Dollar store!

And you could grab tiny pumpkins as part of your grocery shopping trip, they are overflowing in the produce section.

And I could see that rusty cake plate coming from your local Goodwill.

Fabulously frightening!

Love and looking forward to this weekend of fun!

Martha

LOC Gift Shop

If you love historical or old fashion art that has a story behind it, a fun place to browse is the Library of Congress online gift shop. Many of the prints or posters have a side bar that contains some background information on the piece and its historical significance.

I went to Arches National Park in Utah about a thousand times growing up. I think this old travel poster would be cute in a little boy's room or an office.

This is an obvious choice for a laundry room. We can dream about the day when men do laundry while we sit idly by, can't we?

My interest in zoos is renewed after getting a zoo pass this week! I saw some amazing birds there. This poster reminds me of them.

Here's a Depression era poster. But what really caught my eye is that vibrant yellow and the old fashioned signage. I love old buildings and love them even more when they are captured nicely in photography.

Did you love the Little Miss Muffet story growing up? It was definitely a weird one. Curds and whey? What? Anyway, still a cute story and I like how it is portrayed here (now we can see what that tuffet looked like!). This would make a cute little addition to a girl's room. Especially if you were blatantly pushing reading and terror of spiders on her.

Love and loopholes (do you like election season rhetoric? me neither),

Martha

Poster Cabaret

I like to bookmark places online that have cool, affordable art. I just found Poster Cabaret that has a good variety of posters from a variety of different artists. I love these sweet animal prints by Marisa Haedike. They would be adorable in either a girl or boy nursery.

Love and Laramie, Wyoming,

Martha

Parenthood Set Design

I really like the show Parenthood and part of it is because of the beautiful set design. It's set in Berkeley, which gives it a woodsy, hippie vibe. But only one house fits that bill. Another is a traditional, comfortable home. Another is a boat. Another is this one below. It's my favorite. It's open, sleek, modern and kid friendly.

Love and Little Bo Peep (I've got Halloween costumes on the brain),

Martha

Fluffy Light

Are you ever thinking of something and wondering how to do it and then somebody just up and does it? Ever since I saw this image on the cover of Downtown Chic, I've been thinking, "There's got to be a way to recreate that light for cheap." 

I was scanning MadeByGirl today and found this post which led to Nichole's awesome DIY for the fluffy light at her blog, Parlour. She started with a Chinese lantern.

She simply used coffee filters and a glue gun.

And she started gluing. Maybe I shouldn't have said "simply." It took 1200 coffee filters. HELLO!

Look how beautiful it is in her house.

The wheels are turning. What about spray painting it? What about doing several smaller ones in a cluster? I love how Nichole used blue ribbon to hang hers. What about using several different colored ribbons?

Love and lozenges,

Martha

Bird Canvas

Here's another canvas I did recently, this time for my daughter's room. Her nickname is The Bird. Even though the name makes it seem like birds are the obvious choice for decorating, I have been avoiding all the bird related art that's trendy right now. But then ... I just embraced it! The picture above was my inspiration, which I bookmarked here. I bought the only bird paper I could find and, sadly, didn't end up using much of it because I didn't want too many that were similar. The big birds I didn't even use at all because they were too large. 

I spray painted a canvas pink; it was an old canvas that had polka dots on it that I had previously created for Birdie's room but was never thrilled about. I cut branches out of brown paper that had an interesting texture that reminded me of bark. I went easy on the mod podge because it was a lightweight paper. I didn't mod podge over any of the paper I used, just under, because I needed to keep the painted part of the canvas free of glue smudges. Make sense? I'm sure you could use Elmer's glue, too.

I cut out some birds and played around with their placement.

I bought two shades of green glittery paper for leaves and cut those out, just making up shapes and sizes as I went along.

I added more branches. Then glued on the leaves wherever they looked good to me.

Finally, I glued on the birds. I think I added one more after I took this shot. I do hope to add a couple more birds if I find some different bird paper. 

Until then, it works well in my daughter's room. Right next to the bird mobile I made last year. Alright, alright, I was lying about avoiding bird art! I've embraced it all along! And maybe you should, too!

Cool Chairs that Make Me Scream with Joy

My husband is in grad school and, lucky for him, this year they have a new building. Even luckier for him, the interior went the mid-century modern route. Woo hoo! We're going to go see him for lunch today and you better believe I will squeal with joy when I see these chairs and sit in them again. I can't get enough of them.

And don't forget to make your trash receptacles awesome (they didn't forget)!

Love and lunar eclipse,

Martha

Kelly Wearstler Wallpaper

Let's continue the conversation about wallpaper, shall we? I love Kelly Wearstler wallpaper. It's bold and funky.

Love and luxury,

Martha

Apple Canvas

Speaking of wallpaper scraps, I wish I had had some for this canvas project. As you will see, there was much trial, error and mishap with mod podge. So, here's the scene: my dining room wall. It was bare. It needed something. I've had Sarah Jessica Parker's red apple picture (above) in my head for years and decided it was time to make an apple picture of my own. While that apple would be a perfect fit in my kitchen, which has a lot of red in it, I wanted texture and pattern and a different color altogether. My dining room walls are pale yellow (all wall coloring pre-determined by my landlady) and I wasn't feeling like having an only red and yellow kitchen.

Here's my excellently priced 22x28 canvas:

 

I have another canvas project I'd been working on (which I'll post later) and was having the worst time covering it completely with acrylic paint. I know nothing about painting and being an artist, so maybe I was doing it all wrong, but I decided to ditch acrylics and the art store and head to Home Depot for some $4 spray paint. The colors were limited and this wasn't my first choice of green (I wanted a sour green apple color), but I didn't want to go home empty handed, so this kelly green is what I ended up using.

This is my kind of paint project! Quick spray, quick dry, lots of rich color.

I sketched this apple for reference.

And I started with what I had: mod podge and Ikea wrapping paper from last Christmas. Nice idea. Didn't work. The paper was too thin and turned out warped and crinkled.

Off it came before the glue dried. 

Let's see, what else do I have to work with? I was kind of liking the grey, so I mixed black and white acrylic paint and painted a grey/black apple. I can't believe I forgot to take a picture but that thing was FUGLY so maybe it's best I didn't. A black apple! Who wants a black apple on their kitchen wall? It was so depressing and rotten looking. Just bad, bad, bad all around.

I went to a paper store the next day and nabbed this big piece of thick, grey damask paper. 

I cut out an apple pattern in the wrapping paper.

I used the back of an old Sarah Pinto notebook (love her stuff) to cut out a pink stem.

And tah-dah!

(Gotta love that  electrical outlet right in the middle of the wall! I've always wanted to live in an old house and now that I am, I'm appreciating all the normal things about updated places.) 

Love and logic (not the book),

Martha