For Your Weekend...

Hello Victory Etsy shop.  Featuring this gorgeous antique toy truck.

Brilliance and hilarity ensue over at Tiny Art Director.  

Via What Possessed Me.

Baby Hank Vintage.  Beautiful finds, at amazingly affordable prices.  Via DesignMom.

Stunning photos from the Life Photo Archive detailing the work that heroic midwife Maude Callen did in rural South Carolina in the 1950s.  Via Gravel and Gold.

Delightful portraits of children, rounded up over at Design is Mine.

Enjoy!

While We're on the Subject of Decor...

Saw this on Cookie's Nesting blog and let out a shriek:  

How fun does that look?!? AND IT'S A KIT!!!

Rug Follow-Up

Several of you commented on the rug (above) shown in my last post, and since it is one of my favorite items in our home I wanted to share more info about it.

The rug's design is based on one of the original Gee's Bend quilts by Missouri Pettway, called Blocks and Strips. I found an image (shown directly above) of the original quilt, as well as an incredible description of the piece and the story behind its design on the fabulous online catalogue of Gee's Bend Quilts.

Missouri Pettway, 1902-1981. Blocks and strips work-clothes quilt, 1942, cotton, corduroy, cotton sacking material, 90 x 69 inches. Missouri's daughter Arlonzia describes the quilt: "It was when Daddy died. I was about seventeen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight months and passed on. Mama say, 'I going to take his work clothes, shape them into a quilt to remember him, and cover up under it for love.' She take his old pants legs and shirttails, take all the clothes he had, just enough to make that quilt, and I helped her tore them up. Bottom of the pants is narrow, top is wide, and she had me to cutting the top part out and to shape them up in even strips."

I have long been a fan of the inspired quilts of Gee's Bend (the Whitney Museum's 2002 exhibit of the quilts remains one of my favorite art shows I've seen anytime, anywhere) so I was thrilled a couple of years ago when I read about the licensed rug reproductions of the quilts being done by Classic Rug. We were in the process of moving and I needed a rug for the smaller bedroom, so I ran over to the store's 60th Street showroom to snag one.

It is a wonderful piece with so much vitality in the idiosyncratic, asymmetrical design. And of course the back story of the origins of the quilt that inspired the rug's design is fabulous. FYI, I just checked out the Classic Rug website, and pieces from the Gee's Bend collection are in their "clearance room" for 75% off now! I might have to snap up a different one...

Notes on the Nest

So, since I've been prattling on about my fever-pitch nesting, I thought it would be apropos to post some photos of what I've been working on.  I'll start with the single room that I actually view as 95% finished:  the playroom/guest room/Kiddo's future bedroom.

We moved in to this apartment when I was eight months pregnant with the Kiddo.  As you can imagine, at that point my main concern was unpacking and purchasing the essential furniture for each room (we had very little furniture before we moved, and what we did have was pretty flimsy, disposable and dorm-y).  Just in the nick of time we got everything unpacked, although I cannot say terribly organized.  Before we knew it, the baby was born and the loads of baby stuff kind of inundated our home and and has not stopped since!  This is a wonderful problem to have, except that I never really established an infrastructure that would tame the madness that is toys and diapers and kid clothes.

And so, twenty months in and another baby on the way, I decided that I needed to really sort things out and make a place in the apartment that could accommodate all of the Kiddo's things in a sensible, usable way, and that would provide a haven and personal space for him at this time when he is about to experience more upheaval than he can imagine with the arrival of a sibling.  The Kiddo still sleeps with us, and there is no plan to change that anytime soon (unless he initiates a new arrangement) but I wanted to make his clothes and shoes and toys and books accessible to him and easy for all of us to put back in place.  

We already had the daybed, bookshelves, and rug, but there was no lighting, no storage containers, no closet organizers.  After sorting out and sending some things to Salvation Army, I purchased a few types of containers to start dealing with what was left.  Cardboard storage "suitcases"...

A wire container especially for holding the Kiddo's burgeoning collection of balls...

Super rad under-bed storage boxes (FYI, they're on sale!  Great product and a total steal)...

I also got helpful great stuff for the closet:  hanging shelves for clothes and shoes and colorful plastic kid-sized clothes hangers (I don't have a decent pic of these yet).  

At Ikea, we purchased a couple of cute lamps to illuminate things (like the painting next to the bookshelf that always reminds me of Basquiat, and the little end table that I brought in from our bedroom )...

Here's the view heading out of the room (the wall behind the daybed needs more art!)...

And a close-up of the awesome art that is already there; an assemblage by my father, created for the Kiddo in honor of his first birthday...

More soon!

Pregnant Pause

Photo from here.

When I last posted on Thursday, I really wasn't planning on taking the largest unannounced break from my blog to date -- it just kind of happened.  Blogging is funny:  I find that when I'm really into it, there is something totally compulsive about it...at one point in my brief blogging career, if I had already posted a couple of times in one day, I felt like I should do one or two more.  My more recent rhythm has consisted of feeling good about rising above the sleepy-tired-nausea and getting one post up a day -- wanting to but also kind of needing to as if driven internally to stay connected to this little piece of internet real estate. 

However, in the last two weeks I have felt physically better than I have in a few months and a stronger more biological force has taken over; a force is that is called Nesting.  Yes, it started out innocently enough with my mother's visit and our Ikea exploits, but in the interim it has become a case of full-blown, There-Is-a Child-In-My-Womb-And-I-Must-Get-Everything-Organized-And-Prettified-NOW Syndrome.  For a couple of days I ignored my nagging compulsion to blog so that I could focus wholeheartedly on the furniture-building, closet-excavating, junk-throwing-out, picture-hanging madness, and then something funny happened: I entirely lost the urge to blog!  

After a few days had gone by, I was all, "well now I can't just throw any old post up there!  I'll have to explain and analyze!" and then I was all, "hmmm, instead, let me organize all of our socks by color."  And now that six days have passed, you can see which activity won out!

So, here's the thing.  It was really nice taking that blogging break and devoting myself to something else for a while, and I'm really excited about the progress that has happened on the home front in the meantime, but bottom line:  I miss the daily fun and connection of blogging.  

In a way, I'm really glad to have unwittingly tested myself.  In the last week I have learned that I can just put down the laptop and walk away (my blog won't explode!).  But ultimately, I really am back and glad to be.

See you tomorrow, if not sooner ;)

Thanks for tuning in.

I'm Back

In light of my absence here I wouldn't blame you one bit if you thought I got swallowed up forevermore into the black hole of retail that is IKEA.  Well, luckily we survived the shopping trip, we've just been caught up in the vortex that is the furniture assembly process ever since!  As my mother pointed out on our way home from the Red Hook store, Ikea's prices are cheap, but it is possible that they are not cheap enough, considering all you have to do to get them home and functioning.  And yet we are lured into semi-annual expeditions to the Land of Swedish Meatballs nonetheless.

Here we are standing in line to pay, already plum tuckered out:

Pre-Spring Cleaning+Nesting+Mom In Town= IKEA Run

The algebra of IKEA.  After a few days of emphatic closet-purging, thrift-store donating, and cleaning, it's time to fill in the holes of our home-organization with a trip to the Brooklyn store. 

Items on the list:  

Bookshelf for the living room

2 lamps

Home office organizing stuff

Laundry hamper

Frames

Baskets

Drawer organizers

Pantry organizers

Wish us luck!  I promise to return to regular posts soon with details of our trip and fun before/after photos...