Ornamental

Sam and I always have so much fun choosing what Christmas tree ornaments (or "ordaments," as about 50% of the children in this family call them) to make, and then making them, for the ornament party we go to every year. I guess it's becoming my tradition to crochet a little set of amigurumi characters every year. I did the Wizard of Oz last year, and Star Wars the year before that. And this year I decided on Alice in Wonderland. I wasn't able to find a pattern this year, so I just sort of fumbled my way through it, not knowing exactly what I was doing. I used some ideas from this pattern, and looked at this darling set for inspiration.

Alice

Mad Hatter

White Rabbit

Sam (using the wood burner) made a bird ball like he did last year, just for fun. It's impossible to show how intricate and entwined and organic it looks in person. But here are the different sides:

Best of all, Sam made a bunny ball for me this year! Bless him. It's the best thing on our entire Christmas tree. I love it so much. When he showed it to me, I cried.

And…for the party itself, Sam made this owl. He shaped it out of Sculpey and then painted it with acrylics. I never stop being amazed at the things he can create.

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Sight, touch, sound, and . . . taste?

08/08/08. I'll probably get an email from my brother Kenneth tomorrow, saying, "If anyone had contacted me yesterday on 08/08/08, I had a fabulous prize ready to send---too bad no one remembered." That's the sort of thing he's always doing.

If I could have a fabulous prize, perhaps I'd choose one of these lampshades (I really like them!):


And here are a few other interesting things I've run across:

This bathmat made of rocks. I think it would feel good on your feet.

Piano doorbell! Wow. I especially like this commentary:

Musical doorbells are annoying enough, but what if you gave your visitors the freedom to express themselves creatively? That's exactly what designer Li Jian had in mind when he came up with the Pianobell. Unless you are friends with a lot of talented musicians, I don't see much of an upside here.

And this. A bunny mixer. Maybe it's nerdy, but I just like it, I can't help it. I want to paint a little bunny face on my hand mixer now.

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I'm oozing into a shapeless puddle of naked longing over . . .

Many of the blogs I read seem to drop into this kind of design-specific vernacular whenever they describe something. It's like their own special language, some of which I do not like. Particularly bothersome phrases include:

• "eye candy"
• "I'm swooning over ____"
• "I'm drooling over ____"
• "I'm coveting ______"
• referring to something as "this year's must-have"
• using a descriptive word from the sense of taste, for something you don't actually taste; e.g., "A yummy set of chairs" or "What a delicious color of pink!"
• "luscious"
• "sumptuous"

For some reason all those phrases just sound kind of dirty to me. (Along with the dreaded duo, "nuance" and "tweak") Maybe it's the old Puritan values manifesting themselves in my DNA, but isn't there something kind of, I don't know . . . indecent about swooning, drooling, devouring eye-candy, etc.--in public?

Anyway, for the following, I will contain myself to an austere "This is nice":


Wall aquariums! They're so futuristic-looking! I never knew a fishtank could be so stylish and modern. (From here)

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Bubble Wrap Calendar

Sam sent me this link, along with the following all-too-true comment: "Our boys would like this. It would be the fastest year ever." Can you imagine? A whole year, popped away in 30 seconds. It looks fun, though.

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Boys' Room

As you can see, we haven't done much yet with the boys' room (other than the matching quilts in the colors they chose, which my mom sewed up and we tied together). You can't see it in this picture, but Malachi's crib is on the other wall, next to the door, so all three boys are sleeping in the same room, leaving not much extra space. This spurred our decision to find a neat way to store the toys, so they could go out in the adjacent loft.

At some point we (well, I) would like Sam to paint that room, with some kind of mural that would be suitable for both babies and bigger kids. Here is what we did in our old house (which I was sad to leave; too bad you can't take walls with you when you move):




This was the nursery---Sam did the clouds using stylized, iconic (is that the word I want?) shapes, rather than making them super-realistic. There are animal shapes (of course) in the clouds and I love the sunset-type lighting in the room. There are mountains and a few flowers around the bottom border.

This is the Jungle Room--Sam painted it when Abe was about 2, and later Sebby slept in there too. We kept the original wall grey-ish color, and just painted sky on top, and jungle below. We wanted it to look kind of realistic and cool, not too cutesy or cartoon-y. We worked on it together---Sam would sketch out big shapes and I'd fill them in with paint, and then he'd go along and put in the details on top. It was fun--we like doing projects together. :) We also put hooks up to hang monkeys from. I LOVE this room, but the trouble was, lots of the cool little intricate details got covered up (like the tiger in the corner, and other little insects and animals and flowers) when we put furniture in. So next time, maybe we'll try to do something with the details up higher.

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Bedroom, Loft and Laundry

Our bedroom. Haven't done anything with it yet. We are still thinking about what we want.

Not much decorating in here either, but by Beth's special request, here is the laundry room--including our lovely turquoise washer and dryer. I am such an idiot about things like this. We'd been shopping for a washer and dryer before we moved, and of course all I cared about was that it was a cute color. I knew that was unreasonable and I should be looking at function, not appearance, but I just couldn't help it. (I would like to think I am too smart for that sort of thing. But no.) But all the colored ones were way more expensive, and I had very reluctantly resigned myself to getting perfectly good ones in white, when . . .

we saw these turquoise ones at Home Depot. Turquoise . . . just like our dining room wall!! (Obviously, it was meant to be.) And then, they went on sale, and we learned that we'd get $150 back in gas company rebates. Which made them only about $50 more than the boring white ones we'd decided to get. Guess how hard it was to make that purchase? :)

Blogging is so self-indulgent. I can talk at length about all the things I find so fascinating, but I usually keep to myself because I know others won't find them quite so fascinating. :) These are all the things I always want to tell people about our house, but my better nature makes me give the condensed version. I've justified it, because you can always stop reading if you are bored--right?

So, the loft. We opted for the loft instead of 3rd bedroom upstairs, because

a. I've always wanted a loft

b. we figured, if it was a bedroom, we'd have 2 rooms for kids to sleep in but no room for their toys. So the toys would be all jumbled in with their clothes and beds, creating a very non-serene sleeping environment. This way, we have 3 boys sleeping in a room, but then a room with lots of space for them to play in. (Currently, actually, Ky's cradle is in the loft, but when he grows out of that he'll be in the crib.)

However, since I hate toy clutter, and I knew I'd be spending lots of time reading in the loft as well, I wanted to figure out some way to easily organize and clean up the toys. We had this nice built-in bookshelf, so we found these turquoise bins at IKEA (we have these in the laundry room also) and mixed them with some other chocolate-brown ones we had to create nice-looking toy storage. The boxes are designated for: cars, animals, instruments, blocks, baby toys, and legos. (I got rid of a lot of stuff when we moved, so most everything will fit into those categories.) I keep the legos in the high box and the boys have to ask me to get those down (so the small pieces aren't always getting lost). Abe and Seb are great at cleaning up by themselves--they know where everything goes--and when I say, "Can you go get me a toy for Malachi?" they just go to the baby toys box and find one.

I also put the books in rainbow order--this has been a weird OCD-ish quirk of mine since junior high; I organize my clothes that way too--and it works fine, since I don't have so many books that I can't find what I'm looking for pretty easily. (I can usually call up a mental picture of the cover of the book I'm looking for anyway, so I know most of their colors.) With this big bookshelf, we have room for the boys' books too, which I put on lower shelves so they can reach. This has the added benefit that even a small kid can put the books away in the right place--we just say, "Go put that in the yellows" or whatever.

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Living Room

This is the living room area. (In the top picture, I am standing in the part that was supposed to be the dining room) Here we have the problem (which we are still working on) of how to make it seem open and spacious without being too big. We want to have separate areas without closing off either side. Also, we have the problem of blending two styles: when we got married, I inherited a bunch of furniture from my Grandma, and it obviously doesn't fit with our more modern aethestic elsewhere. So we were trying to make it all work together the best we could.

It's still kind of evolving. For this front part, I made additional pillows out of the bottom of the dining room curtains, so that brings in the orange from the other room. And Nana's tables look fine by the piano.

Then Sam did this painting, which is great---I love how it finishes off that big tall wall and adds so much color.

Then the back part has more of Nana's tables and lamps, her round mirror, and her two off-white-ish couches. I put new pillows and an orange blanket over those, to cover up some of the stains and the places where my kids have pulled the buttons out.
Here's a view looking the other direction, towards the front door. At some point maybe we'll get a coffee table or something, but I like it even without.
Here's something kind of funny, though. I liked Nana's furniture when it was in her house, but I never loved it for us (the style just wasn't really my type of thing), but we kept it because it had sentimental value and it saved us from having to buy new stuff. However, I always kind of liked this interesting little tiled table. Then just the other day, we noticed how it just happens to incorporate our exact colors. Turquoise, yellow, and orange. Interesting how styles and colors come back in fashion after a while! (Nana was born in 1905 and died in 2001--I wonder if she would have liked our new house with her cute little table in it?)

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Kitchen

Here's the kitchen. (I wish I weren't in this picture, but it didn't seem worth photoshopping myself out, and anyway I never wanted to be one of those people who freaks out every time they get their picture taken, so, whatever.)

Here are Sam's drawings. We knew the cabinet hardware we wanted (IKEA, naturally) so he drew that in, and then here is a good example of how drawing helped us visualize something: I wanted those orange stools (above) that I'd seen on eBay, and Sam thought the black stools (below, just cut-and-pasted from the ebay site's picture) would be better. When I said I really liked the orange, especially to go with my lovely yellow blender and mixer, he suggested painting the wall below the counter orange instead, so we tried that, and indeed, it did look better.

Also we knew we wanted something to go in the middle of the island and divide it somewhat, since it is so large, and that middle part is not really usable space. (I can barely even reach in that far to wipe it up when it gets dirty.) We experimented with different ideas for planters and pots, but couldn't find anything to match what we imagined, and then I just happened to see a blog post showing this stainless steel herb planter from Chiasso. That seemed perfect, and was even on sale, so that was lucky.

And here's the finished kitchen. Those black stools really do look better. (You are always right, Sam; I should have trusted you.)

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