well folks, here we are! its the end of the road as we know it! its the end of the road as we know it! and i feel fiiiiiine....
ok really just the end of nursery posting for the time being. i want to wrap up with showing the chair we chose, the cheap-as-i-could-make-it frame project, and a couple details that were added into the room after the babe arrived.
first up: the chair nook.
i wanted to have a good reading corner so we positioned the chair by the window, next to the locker unit [so my water glass, books, etc. could rest there], and with the vintage swag pendant hanging overhead to light things up when needed.
let me start off by saying that i did not relish the hunt for a nursery rocker. in the one corner you have expensive padded gliders, which are the design equivalent of an 80's sweater with shoulder pads, in my opin. blech. they cost a lot and there is nothing redeeming about them other than their comfort....which some would say IS their redeeming quality but i just cannot get over the looks [or lack thereof]. so unless i was going to have the nursery on blackout 24-7 this was not an option.
in another corner of the ring you have uuuber expensive amazing looking rockers, such as the
nurseryworks sleepytime chair. BIG FAT SIGH. but did i have a grand to spend on one solitary chair? nope.
and in another corner you have the super fun + famous eames rocker. the consummate classic when it comes to furniture that rocks. HEY-OHHH!
however my concern was with the harder shell, and the lower profile of the back of the chair. i pictured exhausted nights of nursing where all i wanted was a place to lay my head, and this beaut of a chair does not offer this option. and in addition, my girlfriend had already purchased said chair for her nursery, and i wanted to have something different for my own room.
enter corner four. iiiii-kea! ikea! ikea! ikeee-e-e-aaaaa. [yes, that's the hallelujah chorus tune you're hearing]. as referenced in my nursery mood board i'd originally pounced on this pup when it came across my computer screen. [its the ikea lillberg rocker + i would link to it, however it looks to be discontinued]
however when we checked it out in-store, we found it had very VERY minimal rocking ability since the curve on the rocker legs was so slight. and that was on concrete, let alone our comfy frieze carpeting. in its defense, it has a nice wide cushy seat so i did picture great possibilities in terms of sitting indian style, tyke on lap, however it just wasn't living up to expectations overall.
so after wandering the store a while we ended up in the famous poang chair section and lo. and. be. hold.
there was a poang rocker! as far as i knew this was a new item and upon sitting in it i came to the conclusion that it would be the best middle ground on the scale of form + function. comfy enough to where i could sink into it, head support-check!, enough rocking capability to combat the higher pile of our frieze, and the swedish looks still nice + simple + sweet. hellooo bent wood.
well, bent wood that promptly broke upon install. so back to ikea we went [thank goodness its on the way to my parents' house, considering its three hours away from where we live], and retrieved a new frame.
as for the fabric color, i was a little stuck to start. there was not a crisp white option, and i didn't want to go too heavy or saturated with the color either [if there were an orange solid or print i would have changed my mind on that]. so i settled on the neutral but nice random graphic known as 'tuna light blue-gray', which is an icy color that i thought would compliment the light gray walls + white/orange color scheme well. how do i feel about having a tuna chair? well, pretty darn happy considering i snagged it for less than two hundo and c'mon now, it even ties in with the fish swimming around in the crib, if you really want to start reading into things.
and, fun for me, i even caught
a post about it by apartment therapy's baby site, ohdeedoh. check it out! my chair's famous!! funny enough they even comment on the flop that was the lillberg rocker.
as for the chair's occupants. the obvious ones are me. the baby. but get a load of these two:
gotta love the pinnacle of handmade toys, the sock monkey. this one was a
target special, although there were tons of cute orangey options on
etsy as well including striped + argyle + monogrammed sweater-wearing versions. and his new pal, the flamboyantly bright
ugly doll known as plunko. [as opposed to plinko, one of the best price is right games of all time. r.i.p.
rod roddy]. one of my favorite things is those feet both turned to the side. and the wave. and the eyes....the never-blinking eyes. anywho.
rounding out the colorful clique are our friends birdie, spotted giraffe-cow [either he's having an identity crisis or i've lost touch with the animal kingdom], and the newest member: recycled sweater-cat.
i made fast friends with the be-sweatered feline while touring
hopscotch children's boutique in grand rapids. there were many excellent options to choose from in their line of fun re-tooled sweater animals including an awesome bird with stick legs, but alas that combo of coral-y orange + navy was too much for me to handle and i had to take the kitty home.
since having our delightful baby boy we've also been blessed with a few decor gifts from friends + family. added to the locker unit are handmade blocks, that safe for baby h to chew on to his heart's content.
+ a school of fishies
+ a mod polka-dot burp cloth.
and on that note, i'm realizing that once again i've created a rather long [to put it nicely, right?] post that hardly needs one MORE topic added on yet....so yes, the frame project will have to wait for a final FINAL nursery reveal post. thanks y'all for your patience....hope you're enjoying hearing all the dirty details on this work of love!
i wanted to have a good reading corner so we positioned the chair by the window, next to the locker unit [so my water glass, books, etc. could rest there], and with the vintage swag pendant hanging overhead to light things up when needed.
let me start off by saying that i did not relish the hunt for a nursery rocker. in the one corner you have expensive padded gliders, which are the design equivalent of an 80's sweater with shoulder pads, in my opin. blech. they cost a lot and there is nothing redeeming about them other than their comfort....which some would say IS their redeeming quality but i just cannot get over the looks [or lack thereof]. so unless i was going to have the nursery on blackout 24-7 this was not an option.
however when we checked it out in-store, we found it had very VERY minimal rocking ability since the curve on the rocker legs was so slight. and that was on concrete, let alone our comfy frieze carpeting. in its defense, it has a nice wide cushy seat so i did picture great possibilities in terms of sitting indian style, tyke on lap, however it just wasn't living up to expectations overall.
well, bent wood that promptly broke upon install. so back to ikea we went [thank goodness its on the way to my parents' house, considering its three hours away from where we live], and retrieved a new frame.
gotta love the pinnacle of handmade toys, the sock monkey. this one was a target special, although there were tons of cute orangey options on etsy as well including striped + argyle + monogrammed sweater-wearing versions. and his new pal, the flamboyantly bright ugly doll known as plunko. [as opposed to plinko, one of the best price is right games of all time. r.i.p. rod roddy]. one of my favorite things is those feet both turned to the side. and the wave. and the eyes....the never-blinking eyes. anywho.
looks totally crisp + white + oh-some, right? wellll i don't know if its the lighting in ikea or the finish they use on much of their white merchandise, but, it sure looked pretty yellowy to me when we actually stormed the store to pick 'er up. major disappointment. i was hoping for the white to add some polished panache against some of the other tones in the room. thankfully at the time they also sold a grey option which i thought could be sharp as well, and just as neutral gender-wise. i also liked how the grey upped the utilitaritan factor even more. basically it looked like i backed a truck up to a local elementary school and ripped it right out of a classroom. totally bad+ss.
my kid will thank me. someday. i mean, he will. right??!
+ handmade beaver-squirrel-totally-cool-puzzle-thing. a friend of ours graced us with this gem making it even more near + dear to us
and what do those items all have in common? nothing, necessarily! but to my eye each is playful in its own right and relates either scale-wise or color-wise to the rest of the group, so it just....works. especially for creating an eclectic kid-room feel overall.
thanks to my mom's trusty jetson-esque singer sewing machine, circa 1940-something that is, we got those poms wrassled down to the curtain panels in no time at all. talk about injecting a little vintage into a room! this machine is a beaut:
indeed, i discovered this lovely light with its pommish trim before hatching the curtain idea, but i think these two elements get along swimmingly.
i also swapped out the shade for a fresh retro one from menards, that you see above, as the round bulb shade it came with had a flaking floral print on it. not so neutral, no?
peg legs....three clever holes for drawer pulls....stark mod lines....muah!
just look at that gorge linen-y texture. love the cross-hatching that occurs naturally around the whole shade....and those metal studs that secure it shut are just the bee's knees. i'm thinking they're meant to be hidden around on the back side, but i love 'em right out front as a feature.
the bright ring of light emanating out from the bottom of the lamp doesn't go unnoticed by this chica, either. beam me up, scotty!
as for that alpha magic happening above the dresser. the story there is i first spotted this white-framed print on z gallerie's site, about a year ago. [yes, a year ago....so if you do the math, i wasn't pregnant, which might betray just a little of my excitement to tackle this room 'someday'....]
but i digress. back to the point....er, print. after eye-spying it on z gallerie's site, and finding out it was the work of a very talented ms. jenn ski, i banked this in my memory for the rainy day on which i'd actually get to start building my nursery. then lo + behold, shortly after moving into our new home, i uncovered the identical framed print at the back of my local steinmart store and for 20% less than the online z gallerie price! commence celebration!!
my hub was less excited about the pre-pregnancy purchase so you can imagine my excitement when not two weeks later [and the print luckily not returned!] i was staring at two pink lines on a stick. and ripping up a steinmart receipt with glee.
moving around the perimeter of the room, next up is my little wall of shadow boxes. i'm blessed to have some angle interest in the room vs. just a square box of a spot to work with. [this angle is the wall that goes up two stories from the foyer....well technically its just a wall up here, and beneath it two pillars that frame the sw corner of the dining room]
aaaaaand what's inside box #1? let's see!
this is where things really started to get fun for me. i hoped for a modern yet vintagey-eclectic mixture of things in the room so visually there was lots of layered interest throughout. this first shelf holds.... a robin's egg blue pot i uncovered for $.50 at a garage sale, probably six years ago. a compact book with a punchy melon and pink flamingo cover [a nice play on the boy-girl mystery, perched atop that blue pot!]. an antique wooden clothes pin found on etsy.
box numero dos holds another garage sale treasure that i love....an old sea-glass hued canning jar. alongside it sit three perky wooden apples from a local antique/vintage shop named 'found'. another mod little letter. and a lovely fabricy-hardcovered book....a gift from a baby shower.
the secret behind these wall boxes is that they actually used to be dark stained wood....a target global market trio we've had since house number one. they're a few years old now but a fresh coat of white paint does wonders, doesn't it? i personally love how the woodgrain still shows through for an added bit of texture.
accompanying that quirky orange story book is another scattering of letters from tip toes boutique. oh how i love that Q. and the g. and the....uh....&.
you may have noticed that between the three shelves i wanted some correlation and connection color-wise so there's a subtle balance of some orange, some yellow, some blue and some warmer browns that appear in the groupings.
