Millie's White Tree Mural

We wanted to paint a mural in the baby's room.  Actually, I wanted to paint a mural and Sean humored/enabled me. I was envisioning something simple and relatively monochromatic, and I thought white birch trees on a gray background wouldn't show baby vomit would look nice. The trick was, getting the design right, and choosing the right color gray.

This was one of those projects that we finished, and then we went "Oh Dammit! We should have taken pictures before we started."  Alas. We won't have any sweet "before and after" pictures, but I can still describe the room we started with. It was just a normal room.  The walls were white, and it was in ok shape, although scratched and banged up in a few places.  The floor was a disaster and still is, because we figured there is no reason to refinish any floor on which finger painting may occur in the next 5 years.

After extensively gathering, comparing, and obsessing about color swatches on my end, and extensively feigning interest while actually watching college football on Sean's end, we settled on a great color: Dolphin Fin, by BEHR.  I can't say enough good things about this color gray. First of all-- it has the word "dolphin" in the name, and I think we can all agree that dolphins are adorable. Secondly, it comes in a low VOC option, which was important to me, as I did not want our baby to grow any weird extra appendages. Thirdly, it's a nice true gray-- not too purple or too blue, but just right. 

The white color we used was matched from a color that the previous home-owners had used on the floor-boards and window trim (because we are lazy and didn't want to repaint those things. ) It is a great looking white---not exactly off-white, but definitely rich and creamy, and it provided the perfect amount of contrast with the gray--- enough to "pop," but not so much that the design overpowers the room. 

We masked, taped, and then painted the ceiling and walls. We used two coats of the dolphin fin on the walls (we chose the semi gloss option so it would be easier to clean and wipe when she inevitably draws on it with crayons--or worse!) Then, we waited and let everything dry.

Now comes the fun part--the mural. I had done a lot of google image searches for "white tree mural" as I was brainstorming this project.  If you are planning on painting a mural soon, I'd recommend doing some googling for inspiration. Although I didn't find any examples of the mural I had in mind, I found a few that were close.  I discovered that adding a few birds flying through the trees gives the design an ornate touch.  I also learned that, while my initial insticts were to go with a much darker color gray, I actually found those designs to be overpowering, especially for a baby's room.

When the walls were dry, I took a piece of chalk and started to sketch out my design. If you don't trust your artistic abilities, you could always use a projector and trace an image you like onto the wall. Not to brag or anything, but I've been drawing some pretty kick-ass trees since the 5th grade, so I felt confident in my ability to do it free-handed. Once I was happy with my sketch, I took a small paintbrush, and filled in my chalk outlines with white paint.   BLAMO!  End of Mural.  All told it took about 3 hours from start to finish to draw and paint the mural.

Now Millie has a bedroom full of white trees. She loves to stare at them, drooling and making high pitched baby noises which I interpret to mean, "Mommy, I love my mural, thank you!" but, which probably actually means, " Mommy, one day I will smear my own poop on these walls!"

Here is the mural "in progress," by which I mean that I haven't removed the masking tape from the trim yet.

Here is the mural being inspected by our resident art critic, Cricket. 

Grandpa Jay's Window Seat

We have a new item on furniture in our house that I need to brag blog about. This beautiful custom window seat was made for Millie by her Grandpa Jay, who (as you can see) is a very fine woodworker.

Before the baby was born, Jay asked Sean and I what he could build for the baby.  We told him the baby really needed a custom bar top for her home-brew equipment.  He didn't go for it, so we had him build this window seat for the baby's room instead.

What I love about this seat is the built in storage underneath.  Babies come standard with between 200-400 brightly colored baby toys. Millie is too young for most of them, but one day, I can see how she will really enjoy shoving them into her mouth.   In the meantime, I need a way to hide them from the public, since her room is already generally a tornado zone of dirty diapers, puke covered onesies, and cardboard Dr. Suess books. The built in storage is really going to help with that.

Now take a look at the top of the seat. What does that look like to you? That's right, Assholes. It's a single slab of sustainably harvested walnut with live edging! It's what rich people make dining room tables out of, and we are so decadent we just sit around on ours! If a rich person came to our house and saw it they may say, "oh, what a beautiful piece of walnut, are you going to make a dining room table out of that?" And we'll say, "no, we're just going to sit around on our asses on it, but we may change a diaper on it later." BAM. BLAM. BLAMMO. Gosh it's fun living in high society.

So thanks Grandpa Jay, for the beautiful new window seat.  We'll make sure Millie doesn't use it as a dining room table, because, after all, that's where people's asses have been.

Nesting

I don’t know if this happened to anyone else, but early in my pregnancy, I developed an unhealthy interest in throw pillows.  Seriously.  I thought about throw pillows all the time. And slip-covers. Good Lord.  What the fuck was wrong with me? I looked at slip-covers on Amazon AS A LEISURE ACTIVITY.  If had some free time in the day, I would think to myself “oh goody, I can put in some hours on Amazon researching slip covers.” Thankfully, Sean recognized this as a nesting activity and didn’t divorce me, but we did have some hard conversations where I tried to make him care about the throw pillows.  Sean’s studied indifference to these important decisions made me realize that, if the baby was going to have a proper home (one with decent upholstery an accent decor) it would be up to me to make it happen.

I continued nesting hard-core throughout my pregnancy with activities that included painting a mural in the baby’s room, knitting probably 20 different baby hats, and scrubbing every stain in our carpet with a toothbrush and a peroxide solution. But, at around 8 months, my nesting hormones made it absolutely clear that the thing I needed to do right then, THAT VERY MINUTE, before any more time was lost, was landscaping.

We live in Ohio near lake Erie, or, as it’s also known, Practically Canada. So, as you may imagine, January is not the time of year when most people focus on yard work.  However, Sean had spent a lot of time this last Fall clearing the impenetrable thicket of poison ivy, buckthorns, and multi-flora rose off of our hillside, and I was anxious to get the area cleared of sticks before this year’s batch of tender young poison ivy popped up.

I devised a method of building beds LIKE A GENIUS that allowed me to dump all of our assorted sticks, bark, and general wood debris into one place and build some natural looking curved beds. (A friend of our hilariously pointed out to us later that they look like actual nests.) I waddled up and down that hillside hour after hour, dragging sticks, and hammering in wooden stakes to hold the beds in place until the nesting hormones were satisfied.  Afterwards, we reinforced each bed with 2.5 ft. sections of rebar. The next step will be to fill the beds with dirt, leaves, and compost and plant them with daylilies, chives, and strawberries.

Now that the baby is here, my nesting hormones are extremely satisfied with my January landscaping efforts.  I stare out the window at them all the time as my baby sleeps screams contentedly in my arms. To Sean’s enormous relief, I am back to my normal state of not giving a shit about throw pillows, although I still can’t stop knitting baby hats. I’ll keep you posted on the hillside “nests” as we plant them and post more pictures soon!

• We ended up buying the Surefit stretch slipcover in a minty green.  It looks pretty good because the seat cushions are in their own case, so it acts more like a normal couch.  It does show dog hair, but this may not be a problem for those of you who have well behaved dogs that can be trusted to stay off the couch.
• The throw pillows have down feathers that poke through their cases and stab us (and the baby) whenever we’re on the couch.  We hate them.

Here are some photos of the "nests" at the top of the hill...