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!

I Could Live at Ikea... Oh, Wait! We Already Do.

Well, practically. I swear almost every piece of furniture in our home is from Ikea.

When we first moved in here, we had about 5 or 6 Ikea pieces. Then shortly afterwards we acquired more, some from a shopping expedition and some from Matt's bosses, who were kind enough to bestow us with these Ikea shelves and wardrobes that had just been collecting dust in a storage facility. I'm pretty sure that the kitchen and bathroom cabinetry here is from Ikea. And the previous owners left us with wardrobes that also look very Ikea-like.

Now, while I'm all for recycling and free stuff, from day one that Matt's bosses' hand-me-downs came into our home, I'd been wanting to get them out. At least the behemoths that are these (Picture three of these in a row. In my haste to get rid of these, I forgot to take a decent picture of them all together):

here's a side view of them in a row:


In our Spring Cleaning bout, we finally got rid of three out of four of these hideous (to me) eighties-looking wardrobes. The last one (pictured above) is still with us until we come up with a better solution for our extra bedding, linens, etc. They were actually great storage units, and if we had painted them white or black, which we initially intended to do, they probably wouldn't have bothered me as much. But my biggest peeve with them is the overhang above the doors, which was designed for lighting to be put there. Practical, yes. Pretty? No!

I generally heart Ikea, though. When you're on a limited budget, but still want stuff that is stylish, Ikea is a great place to shop. And there's nothing like a little retail therapy to lift your spirits, if only temporarily.

Let's just say that I had time to develop a pretty extensive wishlist since our last trip there. Plus we had the perfect excuse to get some new things since we had just gotten rid of some old ones.

So Tuesday night was spent at Ikea.

As we walked around, Matt was convinced that the founder of Ikea is a genius. He marveled at how this man thought to create affordable and therefore "disposable" furniture. Apparently, despite his wealth, he still only files economy and wears a $100 suit.

I don't think Matt thought he was a genius last night though, when we spent part of it putting together this dining table, with cheap screws that could have been the demise of our new eating surface.

And these much-needed hampers, which you wouldn't think would be hard to assemble, but actually require a great deal of force to put together. You need a hammer for them.


I originally had wanted to get this table and these chairs in white, which look so sleek and great together. But after seeing them in person, you understand why the table is only $69. If you want to feel like hurling after a meal, get this table, because it will wobble every time you lean on it.

And the chairs, not too comfortable on the tush.

So I'm just going to paint the much sturdier table we got in white, to achieve the same look. Chairs will have to scavenged, possibly off of Craigslist.

We were also shopping for a sofa-bed since my mom is coming for a visit in May and we don't have a proper guest bed. I had been thinking about this one in white, after doing some research online, but again in person wasn't so thrilled about it.
We saw this one instead, but it's not on the Canadian website, so I'm not sure if it's available, or if there's a huge waiting time for it. Why do sofa-beds have to be so expensive? And you don't even know if they'll be comfortable.

If anyone can recommend a sofa-bed or a place to find some decent and affordable ($1000 or less) brand new ones in Toronto, please let me know!

Besides obsessing over home decorating lately, I've been printing up more scarves for this crafty chick, printing up tees to send to a new store and packing and mailing orders.

How fitting is this scarf for this post?

Yep. Still got Ikea on the brain.

Okay, I'm off to do print some more things. Look for new items in the shop before the week's end.