Friday, September 11, 2009

Making Room for Baby & Shop Stuff

That's a bit of what I've been up to recently. Since we live in a loft, the open concept requires a bit more planning for a baby and we've been racking our brains on how to divide up the space. Right now we only have these curtains as a room divider.
I am leaning towards enclosing our bedroom to keep the cats out - where baby will sleep for the first year, most likely - but whatever we put up has to still let light in, be relatively lightweight but sturdy, be easy to install and affordable! Yeah, wishful thinking. Matt wants to build shoji screen sliding doors himself - I took out the book below from the library for him - but without a proper workshop and tools, I'm wondering how easy this diy project will be. Those of course would be ideal (except who knows how they would hold up with the cats loving to scratch wood?). We've got less than 4 months to come up with a solution.

{Oh yeah, we found out it's going to be a girl!

I've kind of just been savouring the news and telling a handful of people so far. We'll see if the results hold up, since I've already had my share of surprises with the pregnancy so far}


We've been making room for our new addition in there over the past several months and finally acquired a lovely new dresser for all of us on our last trip to Ikea.


Most of my clothes have made their way onto the other side of our bedroom and I am badly wanting to finish my walk-in closet plan for them, since it is kind of a sight for sore eyes at the moment.

The Stolmen system from Ikea is what I have in mind for our personal clothing and also for my shop stock, as it works well in places with high ceilings. So I'm on craigslist daily searching for that and numerous other Ikea pieces at reasonable prices.


And speaking of making room for baby, unintentionally, this past week we had to throw out almost everything we had stored in our building's basement storage locker, due to our own and someone else's ignorance. Apparently every time it rains - and this summer has been a wet one for sure - the basement in our building tends to flood. We only found this out recently. Well, combine that with someone not speaking up about a broken pipe in her storage locker and our choice to store stuff in cardboard boxes, and you get damaged goods. Plus, since we didn't try to salvage things right away, mold started accumulating and for our safety and our baby's safety, we - well, Matt mostly because I shouldn't be moving heavy things right now - had to toss out everything that we thought had been contaminated and wasn't utterly important.

That included all of his childhood mementos, albums, artwork and his most prized toy, a stuffed rabbit - his mom had gathered it all to give to him when she and his dad moved out east several years back. For me, I had to let go of a box full of old journals and sketchbooks, which had me a bit ill at ease. I don't want to imagine someone else reading those or going through my personal things. But oh well, if that stuff had meant such a great deal to us, we probably wouldn't have put them down in storage. That's what I've tried to tell myself.

As well as rearranging stuff in our home, I tried out the new rearrange shop feature on etsy the other day and colour coded all my items. I don't know why, but I tend to do that with things. My clothes are like that and when I had my own section for clothing in stores, I would do that. Our bookshelves are like that too.

Right now, red is on the first page. I will change that up probably every so often. At least you can still change the view to select "most recently listed".


Other than that, I've been pretty busy screen printing for others and getting together my own Fall stock to send out to various shops. This is one of the images I printed, which is also one of my favourite new ones available through Oddbird Designs.


I'm also working on a new design featuring an owl - yes, not just a puttytat! - and will hopefully have it ready to unveil and print in a week or so. And I've got a new custom portrait keeping me busy too, which I'll post about another day. So all in all, pretty busy and happy for it.

This month's giveaway will be another good one, with 3 different winners chosen, so be sure to check back on the 15th!

6 comments:

  1. I recently saw a dining nook turned into a baby's room on Ikea Hacker, here: http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/2009/09/baby-room-with-ikea-hacks.html although they probably don't have to worry about cats.

    Congrats on finding out it's a girl! It's so exciting! :)

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  2. by the way, that last comment was me, Angela pillowhead.

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  3. Can't wait to see your owl designs--I'm all about the owls! So sossy to hear about the stuff in storage that was ruined. So hard to part with things that hold such meaning. But then again, it is kind of zen--I need to do some purging, myself!

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  4. Congrats on your news about a daughter!! And I am so, so sorry to hear about the water damage. Hope the rearranging continues to go well- I actually like organizing and stuff like this so your project sounds like fun :)

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  5. thanks for the link and the congrats, angela. funny, i was thinking "who's the x man?", so your second comment helped :)

    it's pregnancy brain kicking in, i think. becoming more and more forgetful.

    thanks, stacey and ks. decluttering is something i constantly do and it does feel rewarding. and i love to rearrange and reorganize our home too... just wish i had an endless budget to work with :)

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  6. Many baby shops provide parents with important information regarding child rearing and what babies need as they grow and develop. The staff are highly knowledgeable and have expertise in the types of toys and furniture that will help a child to learn and grow in a safe environment. The shop will have furniture that meets strict safety guidelines and one does not have to worry about whether or not it is safe for use with a baby.

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